


Lost and Found

by airgeer



Series: Far From Home [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airgeer/pseuds/airgeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The New Directions are an amateur adventuring company that dreams of being heroes. Their dream comes true, but not the way they thought it would.</p>
<p>Part Four: Two knights on a rescue mission get more than they expected. Much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

Blaine trudged up the path to the ancient fort, Sam following behind him. He kept one wary hand on his sword, the eerie silence that had surrounded them for days palpable in the air. After what they had just seen, neither of them felt like talking about what they might find when they reached the top.

 

They’d been traveling for weeks to reach this place, and they’d arrived mere hours too late. Sam had been the one to spot the wagon, hidden in the trees and camouflaged by the colours of late autumn, with two horses picketed nearby. Blaine had recognized the fort from the dream the Goddess had given him, and they’d left their mounts with the two cart horses.

 

Hardly twenty minutes into their climb, there had been a faint rumble underneath their feet that spurred them into moving faster. They were there for a rescue mission, the Goddess had said, and it sounded like something was happening underneath of them. They’d climbed hard, concerned about what the rumbling could mean for the well-being of the other heroes, but they’d still been far down from the looming fort when a frustrated roar filled the air, echoing off the mountains and reflecting back to them, and an enormous red dragon leapt into the air from where it had been previously obscured by the walls of the fort.

 

A rush of horrible dread had filled Blaine’s head, pushing out all rational thought. He had barely had the presence of mind to drop and cover himself with his cloak to hide the glint of sunlight off his armour before a heavy beating of wings filled the air along with the almost painful dragonfear. The dragon swooped low overhead, and Blaine’s heart had thudded with the realization that if it saw them, they were as good as dead.

 

The dragon hadn’t seen them though, and the wingbeats had receded into the distance. The fear had eased as the dragon got further away, and Blaine had rolled over onto his back to watch it go. A solitary figure had sat upon its back, larger than any human.

 

“Ylidihe?” Sam had said, still nearly breathless with the fear the presence of a dragon could inspire in mortal beings without a second thought. “That was Ylidihe. It must have been.”

 

“Sorin, too, probably,” Blaine had added reluctantly. “There was someone on her back. We’re too late.”

 

Their failure sat heavy in Blaine’s stomach as they made the final approach to the fort gates. Ylidihe and Sorin leaving alone could only mean that the others were dead, that the rescue mission he and Sam had set out on when the Goddess came to them in a dream was over before it had started. There were supposed to be fifteen of them. What could they do with two?

 

The courtyard was deserted and destroyed, but there were no signs of a recent fight, or traces of the carnage that a dragon would have left. Blaine stepped back to let Sam lead the way.

 

They emerged into the main hall, and their path was immediately marked out for them. Debris had been cleared in a straight line to a set of stairs winding down into darkness, rocks simply sliced in half at the edges of it, ground into so much dust with a precision that spoke of a powerful psychic in a hurry.

 

“Going down?” Sam asked with a forced casualness, swinging his pack off his back and digging through it for a torch. Blaine nodded, trying to keep his expression neutral, but from the way Sam smiled wryly at him, he hadn’t succeeded at keeping his dread that they were only going to find corpses down below off his face.

 

Sam struck his flint, lighting the torch in a well-practised motion. He passed it to Blaine to free his hands and pulled his pack back on. “I’ll go first,” he said, abandoning all pretence of optimism and reaching back for the torch. “You watch our backs in case Sorin comes back.”

 

They climbed down the winding staircase in silence. Debris had been cleared from it as well, making their trip down easy, but it was still scattered across the floor of the corridor. Sam set off at a quick pace, poking his head into rooms and then continuing when he found nothing of interest. Blaine nearly had to jog to keep up, Sam’s height giving him a speed advantage.

 

“Should we be calling them?” Sam asked eventually. “If they have ranged weapons, I’d rather not be shot if we take them by surprise.”

 

Blaine shrugged. If they were dead, it wasn’t going to matter. “Hello?” he tried, his voice echoing down the tunnel. “Is there anyone here?”

 

They stopped to listen for an answer, but nothing came. Sam started walking again, the torch casting shadows along the rough walls. He poked his head into a large archway and froze. “Packs,” he said. “Two of them. They look like they haven’t been here long. And a portal, actually.”

 

Blaine’s attention had been caught up by something else. “There’s blood on the floor,” he said, pointing at a dark trail that started on the wall opposite the archway and disappeared through it. He ran a finger through it, noting that it was only hours old.

 

Sam looked at him, raising a gloved hand to tug unhappily at the neck of his cloak. “It might not mean what we think,” he tried. “If there’s no body, they might be fine. They have a cleric, they could be alive.”

 

“They could be,” Blaine agreed slowly, looking into the room. Two packs were piled against a wall, and there was a small puddle of blood on the floor with the trail leading up to it, but not nearly enough to take as proof of death, especially if they had a cleric with them. “The packs are a good sign,” he said after a moment of thinking desperately for something positive to say. “We know there are twelve of them, but there are only two packs. Maybe most of them escaped through the portal?”

 

“So our rescue mission is what, finding the two that didn’t escape?” Sam frowned. “They’re probably dead, if their friends left without them and Sorin was here. Why would the Goddess send us here if there’s no one to rescue?”

 

Blaine pressed down the sudden surge of irritation he felt. He knew he wasn’t angry at Sam, it wouldn’t help to snap at him, but the whole situation just  _sucked_. They’d traveled for so long to find this stupid place, and the people they were there to find were either gone or dead. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Let’s just keep going. The Goddess must have had a reason for sending us here.”  _Or maybe we failed,_  he thought.  _Maybe we were supposed to be here before Sorin, join them, help them escape, and we were too slow. What are we supposed to do then?_

 

Sam shrugged and backed out of the room again. “Hello?” he called down the corridor. “Is there anyone there? Hello?”

 

They waited for an answer, but there was nothing. Blaine kept an eye out behind them as they moved on, knowing that the jingling of their armour made it impossible for them not announce their presence. It wasn’t like they were trying to hide, anyway, what with the yelling. Blaine briefly considered that not even trying to move quietly when they had no idea what sort of creatures inhabited the area was not the best idea, but he and Sam were highly trained paladins. They could handle almost anything. Except for death.

 

Blaine shook his head to get the thought out of his head. The Goddess wouldn’t have sent them all the way to this gods-forsaken place for nothing. They would find someone alive. They had to.

 

When the way was blocked by a wall of broken rock, Blaine felt the last of his hopes slip and crumble away. He let his shoulders slump, and approached the wall.

 

“I guess we know what that rumbling was,” Sam said, sounding just as defeated as Blaine felt. “How much of this place do you think is still intact? Sorin could have just brought the roof down on them, and we’d never find their bodies to know for sure.”

 

Blaine poked at the rocks at the very edge of the fall with his foot. They’d been brought down very precisely, the tunnel roof intact until it suddenly wasn’t, sheared cleanly across and broken into chunks that ranged from dust to the size of Blaine’s head. His foot nudged at  _something_  that wasn’t rock, and he couldn’t hold back a gasp of surprise.

 

“What?” Sam demanded behind him. Blaine ignored him, sinking to his knees and brushing dust aside, raising a small cloud and revealing a pale, dirty hand. Blood streaked down it, and it was cold and stiff to the touch when Blaine stripped off his glove to check. Blaine closed his eyes and bowed his head in prayer, aware of Sam sinking to his knees beside him.

 

Blaine heard the rocks begin to move, and opened his eyes to see Sam shifting them. “What are you doing?” he asked incredulously. “Leave the dead be, Sam.”

 

“We’re here for a reason, Blaine,” Sam said, pulling off a large rock and revealing an awkwardly bent arm. “You said it yourself. I’m holding out for a miracle. Help me dig them out.”

 

It was slow-going and painstaking. They had no supplies for digging, and no wish to trigger further collapses, so they had to take care. The huddled corpse of the boy they pulled out of the rubble was barely intact, crushed as he’d been by the weight of the rock. A crossbow bolt jutted out of his shoulder, and the back of his skull had been caved in by an impact. Blaine nearly vomited at the gruesome sight of his exposed brain, but held it back, instead twitching the corpse’s filthy cloak up to cover the mess and backing away, unwilling to touch it further.

 

Sam joined him, covering his mouth with his arm and visibly nauseous. “That’s disgusting,” he said simply. Blaine simply nodded in agreement, unable to take his eyes off of the corpse even with the damage hidden.

 

The blinding flash of white light took them both by surprise. Blaine was still blinking to clear the spots from his vision when the boy’s corpse stood unsteadily and tottered back towards the fallen rock, brushing its hand along it as it walked toward the wall.

 

Blaine drew his sword quickly, the rasp twinned by Sam drawing his at the same time. The body of the boy was hidden by his cloak, but it was almost certainly a ghoul, and that was something he was familiar with, and knew how to fight. He exchanged a glance with Sam and drew his holy symbol out from under his tunic, pulling the chain taut around the back of his neck.

 

“Begone,” he commanded, feeling divine power rush to him through his holy symbol and layer itself over his voice. He faltered slightly when the corpse didn’t react, reaching the wall of the tunnel and dropping to its knees, laying both hands on the pile of fallen rock at its very edge. The stone began to glow with white light, before a huge chunk of it dissolved into dust, carried away down the corridor by a gust of air that whipped Blaine’s cloak up with its speed. As the light faded, Blaine caught a glimpse of another body, revealed by the destruction of the rock.

 

The dead boy turned to face them, his dirt and blood streaked face slack and unmoving in the torchlight. Blaine nearly dropped his sword when he spoke. “Blaine, Sam, good work. This is all I wanted from you.”

 

Blaine firmed his grip and fanned away from Sam to present a wider target. “Who are you? What are you?”

 

“For now, I’m the Goddess of the Weave. After that, I’ll be Kurt Hummel, and that,” he gestured to the body he’d- she’d?- uncovered, “will be Mercedes Jones. They’re who I sent you here to rescue, and now you need to head south to the Plaguelands with them. Both of you have done very well, and you’ll be rewarded when I am restored.” The boy spoke quickly as his body sat on the ground and lay down, and despite his shock, Blaine still somehow had the foresight to close his eyes before the corridor lit up with a flash of white light a third time.

 

It was stronger this time, accompanied by a loud roar and a tingling sensation that made the hair on Blaine’s arms stand up. When his vision cleared, the boy was still lying on the ground, but his filthy hands had been raised to cover his face. His body appeared to be unharmed, a far cry from the mangled mess that Blaine had pulled from the pile of rock.

 

Blaine approached hesitantly, sheathing his sword. “Hello?” he said. “Um, I’m Blaine, this is Sam. Are you okay?” It was a ridiculous question, considering that not three minutes ago the boy had been a corpse, but Blaine was at a bit of a loss as to what to say to the recently dead.

 

The boy didn’t answer, but the other person did. “I’m fine,” she said, sitting back on her heels. Blaine jerked in surprise. He hadn’t even seen her get up. “You’re the paladins?”

 

“Um, yes,” Sam said, sliding his sword back into its scabbard. “You’re the ones who died in a rockfall.” Blaine slowly turned to stare at him open mouthed, and Sam shrugged helplessly.

 

When Blaine turned back to the girl, she was looking at Sam with her head tilted to the side and an odd expression. “That’s us, I guess,” she said. “I’m Mercedes. Give us a minute?”

 

“Um, like, go away?” Sam stammered slightly, the embarrassed flush on his face visible even in the dim torchlight.

 

“Please?” Mercedes put on a strained looking smile as she stood up and slowly walked over to where the boy was still ignoring them all, hands firmly over his face. Blaine looked back to Sam and shrugged, turning and heading back down the corridor to give them some privacy.

 

“This is not what I was expecting,” Sam said. “I’ve read stories about the dead being raised, but they’re all from before the Spellplague. This is weird.”

 

“What were you expecting to happen when you made me help you dig out a corpse and said you were holding out for a miracle? That he wouldn’t actually be dead?” Blaine snapped, then bit his lip. “Sorry. You’re right. This is...really weird.”

 

“On the other hand though, assuming that this isn’t an elaborate plot and they’re plotting to kill us back there, we just got a direct visit from the Goddess, and we know what we’re supposed to do next.  _And_ , we know where fourteen of the fifteen of us were, like three hours ago. That’s more than we’ve ever had, besides the whole ‘destroy my mortal body’ thing.”

 

“Yeah,” Blaine said distractedly, trying to resist the urge to eavesdrop. Instead he swung his pack down and dug through, finding his large map. “So, we’re heading south. We can take that wagon, probably, it can hold supplies and give us a place to sleep off the ground when the snow starts. Which do you think is the best way?”

 

Sam leaned in, holding the torch closer so they could see. “This way, I think,” he said. “Out of the mountains the way we came, then south through the plains, and through the forest.”

 

“This map is old,” Blaine reminded him. “There aren’t elves in that forest anymore, man. People probably haven’t traveled that road regularly since the Spellplague.”

 

“I know,” Sam said, but Blaine could hear the disappointment. Sam’s never ending desire to go and live with elves had been a recurring theme throughout their childhood. “It’s still the most direct route though.”

 

Blaine shrugged and rolled the map back up, sliding it back into the case. “Do you think the guy’s okay? He wasn’t moving.”

 

“I dunno, man, I know as much as you,” Sam said. “I think I’d find dying pretty rough too, especially like that. Can you imagine? Looking up and seeing the rocks fall, and knowing it was all over? That would be awful.”

 

“Yeah,” Blaine echoed, tracing patterns with his foot on the dusty floor. “Awful.”

 

~*~

 

As soon as the paladins rounded the corner, taking their torch with them, Mercedes dropped to her knees beside Kurt, grasping her holy symbol and saying a prayer to light it. “Hey, Kurt?” she said softly, gently touching his hand. “Can you hear me?”

 

Kurt shook his head slightly, his fingertips white underneath the dirt and blood from how hard he was pressing them into his face. “I know you can,” Mercedes said, keeping her tone soft and even. “The Goddess told me what happened, Kurt. I was with her after. She let me watch what you did just now, and I know what Sorin made you do at Lilsholm.” Her voice shook with grief, but she took a deep breath and pressed on. “I know everything, and I’m sad, and I’m angry, but not at you. We’ve been given a chance to fix this, but I can’t do it without you.”

 

“’M tired, Dad,” Kurt mumbled finally. “I don’t feel well.”

 

A sudden sick feeling raced through Mercedes’ gut. “Kurt, I’m not your dad,” she said carefully. “Do you know where you are?”

 

Kurt moaned and slowly lowered his arms, squinting up at her in the light. “Oh,” he said after a long pause. “Not home. Not dead.” He waited a moment longer, eyes slowly focusing. “You’re not dead?”

 

Mercedes stroked a hair over his dirt and blood encrusted hair, trying not to shudder at what she knew the source of the blood had to be. “No, baby, I’m not dead. I think I’m doing better than you at this point.”

 

Kurt pouted up at her, his eyes slowly sliding shut again. “It was nice there. I didn’t want to come back.” He jerked and opened his eyes again, looking almost alert and asked, “Are you okay? Did it hurt you?”

 

Mercedes slid her free hand under his head behind his cloak, trying to tip him upright. “No, I’m not hurt,” she said. Kurt’s face relaxed, his eyes closing entirely, and she jostled his shoulder gently. “Can you stay awake for me, Kurt? We’ll talk later, but can we just try and get you standing now? There are people waiting for us.”

 

Kurt mumbled unintelligibly, but didn’t open his eyes again. Mercedes couldn’t help but wonder why she was feeling okay, but Kurt was barely conscious. The Goddess had told her that he’d need her when they went back, but hadn’t elaborated. One moment Mercedes had been standing beside the Goddess as she explained that this would be the last intervention she’d be able to make unless someone else died, that everything she’d done in the brief window of time she’d had to work in had exhausted her limited power, and then she’d been awake in her body, feeling a little shaky, but no worse for the wear. It was an odd sensation, knowing what a fatal knife wound felt like but feeling nothing but phantom pain.

 

The difference between the two of them was that the Goddess had used Kurt’s body, however briefly, Mercedes realized. She felt foolish for not thinking of it before. A human body could only channel so much divine energy, and as a cleric, she’d been trained to be able to handle more, but it could harm even her if she tried to use too much. The Goddess had used Kurt to remove the rock on top of her, and that easily could have exhausted his body, unused as it was to having divine power channel through it. The worst part was that there was nothing she could do. More divine magic would only hurt him, now.

 

“Okay,” she said to herself as Kurt’s face slackened and he fell completely asleep. “Okay, we can deal with this. We’ve got the paladins, and the Goddess said we could trust them. We’re on our own besides that, but it’ll be okay. The others escaped, and Sorin thinks we’re dead. That gives us some time.”

 

She bit her lip to keep it from trembling at the sudden rush of helplessness she felt. Denial was not working. They were in so much trouble. Their friends were gone, and she had no idea if they were still alive. She knew that Kurt’s brief foray into death wasn’t going to improve how screwed up he’d been since Sorin, and now they only had each other and two strangers. She wished, more than she’d ever wished for anything before, that they were in Lilsholm, that her mom was waiting for her to come home, that all of the horrible things that had happened had been a dream. Sorin had done so much, the Goddess hadn’t even shown Mercedes all of it and it was so, so much, and she had no idea how to help or what to do. 

 

“Um, are you still okay?” one of the paladins called, dragging Mercedes abruptly out of her thoughts. “Can we come back now?”

 

Mercedes took a deep breath and steadied herself. “We’re okay, sort of. You can come back.” They rounded the corner and came back up the passage. “Thanks for waiting,” she added when they were close enough she wouldn’t have to yell. “I appreciate it.”

 

The blond one held up his torch a little and peered down at Kurt. “Is he asleep?” The two of them looked at her in confusion, and Mercedes shrugged.

 

“The Goddess used his body to get rid of those rocks, and he’s pretty far from a cleric, or even a paladin, when it comes to channeling divine magic. I think it just wore him out and he’ll be okay after some rest.” Mercedes paused and waited for them to nod in understanding. She had never met a paladin, after all, no paladin would have business in Lilsholm, but she knew that they had limited abilities in channeling divine magic, mostly useful for healing smaller injuries and battling the undead. They probably had the training to understand what being used as a divine channel with a body that wasn’t accustomed to it could do.

 

The dark haired one nodded first, face clearing in understanding and turning to his partner. “So basically we’re looking at that time that you tried to repel an entire graveyard’s worth of undead for over an hour and knocked yourself out, Sam.”

 

“You getting yourself stabbed was the reason we had to hide out in that mausoleum in the first place, so I wouldn’t talk,” the blond one snapped back, flushing slightly in the torchlight. He looked at Mercedes earnestly. “Seriously, I saved his life.”

 

Mercedes couldn’t not smile back when he smiled tentatively at her. “I’m Sam,” he said. “This is Blaine. We’re from the Order of the Goddess, and we’re here to help you.” Blaine nodded emphatically, kneeling down beside her.

 

“Sam was okay after not too long,” he said. “I’m sure he will be too, and we’ve got the time to wait for him, since I don’t think Sorin will be back. She and Ylidihe were flying away as we climbed up, and as far as they know, there’s nothing here for them.” He paused, looking at Mercedes and wrinkling his nose slightly. “There was a room with a portal with two packs in it. Do you think they’re yours? One of us could go get them, and then you could clean up a little. If you wanted.”

 

Mercedes became suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the tackiness of nearly-dry blood on her chest and neck, and the dust and dirt that covered her everywhere else. “Oh, gods, please yes,” she said quickly, rubbing flakes of dried blood off her neck. “They’re probably ours. The rest of our group took theirs when they left through the portal.”

 

Sam and Blaine both looked at her oddly, and she explained quickly, “The Goddess let me watch while I was dead, so I know what happened afterwards. They opened a portal and left. I don’t know what happened to them after that, or even where they were going, but they’re smart. If they can stay away from Sorin, they’ll be fine.” She had to believe that they would be.

 

She could tell that they had questions, but she was grateful when they didn’t ask them. Blaine stood up and took the torch from Sam, heading up and away from them. Mercedes looked back to Kurt, pillowing his head on the hood of his cloak and taking her hand back. She wrapped the dirty edge of Kurt’s cloak around him, cringing at the grossness of it, but reasoning that he couldn’t actually get much filthier, but he could get colder.

 

Sam was there are she picked herself up, offering his hand. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the help. “So,” she said, searching for a conversation topic that hopefully didn’t involve more gruesome death. “You said you two were from the Order of the Goddess? What’s that?”

 

“It’s an order of paladins that dates nearly back to the Spellplague,” Sam said enthusiastically. “We’re dedicated to the Goddess of the Weave, following her bidding and working to heal the effects of the Spellplague.” He paused and thought for a second. “How much do you know about what we’re supposed to do? Everything?”

 

“Mostly, I think,” Mercedes said. “The Goddess was pretty thorough, and it’s not like it’s complicated. Basically, she made it so there are fifteen people who can safely enter the Plaguelands, and whoever of us makes to the center is supposed to destroy the Goddess’ mortal body. Right?”

 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Sam said. “So anyway, Sorin knows about the Order, so the Goddess got these adventurers to track down her chosen instead of them, but they only found thirteen before they just kinda disappeared and the Order lost track of them all. Blaine and I were the two that they didn’t find, and the last time we heard of the Goddess directly intervening before all this started was when she told a paladin what had happened and where to find us. So we grew up in the Order, and then we had a dream from the Goddess telling us to come here and rescue you, and that’s about it, really.”

 

“So, you’ve known for a while what we’re supposed to do?” Mercedes asked. “Because I only found out when I died, and it came as a bit of a surprise.” Surprise was an understatement. The Goddess had told her so much so quickly, from what they were supposed to do to Sorin’s role in everything to there being an enormous red dragon that could kill them all as soon as look at them after them that Mercedes was surprised that she hadn’t crumpled into a ball of denial.

 

“No, yeah, we’ve known our entire lives,” Sam said. “I guess we had it a lot better than you guys did.”

 

Mercedes shrugged noncommittally. The Goddess hadn’t been forthcoming about why there were so many of them, but she could guess. The Plaguelands were teeming with abominations, and it was sheer luck that Sorin and Ylidihe hadn’t already removed the twelve members of New Directions from play. She had made extras, because the Goddess didn’t expect them all to survive. Mercedes was grateful that she’d had so much time without knowing that she was almost certainly going to die a horrible death hanging over her head. It hadn’t exactly stopped her from dying a horrible death once already, but at least she’d had a childhood.

 

A flickering light up the tunnel announced that Blaine was returning, and sure enough, it was only moments before he came into sight, weighed down by her and Kurt’s packs. Mercedes hurried to help him set them down, offering a grateful smile and a thank you before she wiped as much dirt off her hands as she could on one of the cleanest spots on her tunic and opened the large main section.

 

Kurt had scavenged enough clothes when they fled Sorin’s camp that she could discard the ones she was wearing and still have several changes, but Mercedes thought that she should try to clean them first, just in case she needed them. She pulled out a change of clothes and a water skin. She could use her tunic as a rag to clean off her skin and cloak, since it was almost certainly unsalvageable.

 

“I’m going to up the tunnel a ways to change, alright?” she asked. “Can you watch Kurt for a bit?”

 

“We can get him mostly cleaned up, if that’s okay,” Blaine offered. “I’m sure he’d be happy to wake up a little less, um, bloody.”

 

Kurt wouldn’t react well to waking up in different clothes, and he would definitely notice. It was Kurt, after all. “Thanks, but I think it’s probably best if you just don’t touch him,” Mercedes said as politely as she could, debating how far to go in telling them about Kurt. They would find out eventually, she reasoned, and it would be better if they found out early on rather than if Kurt freaked out at some point. Maybe she could be vague about it, and protect Kurt without giving too much away. “Sorin hurt him,” she said finally. “If he wants to give you the details, that’s his choice, but you need to careful with him, because it was really bad. Just, can you be gentle? Please? I know the four of us are kind of stuck together, but I’m not letting him get hurt again.”

 

They stared at her in silent shock for a moment before nodding at her with wide and sincere eyes, synchronized in a way that verged on adorable. “Thank you,” Mercedes said quietly. She turned and walked up the tunnel, avoiding chunks of rubble, and turned one last time to make sure Kurt was still okay before rounding the corner. The paladins stood off to the side, staying carefully away from Kurt, and she felt a little better at their consideration. Maybe it could be okay, after all.

  
  
~*~

 

They had been traveling for three full days before Kurt was able to do anything on a consistent basis other than sleep in the wagon bed. He had woken up once when Blaine was taking his turn to drive the wagon, dragging himself to the head of the wagon to sit behind Blaine and mumble at him sleepily. Blaine had been flattered that he trusted him so easily, right up until he’d realized that Kurt was talking  _to_  someone named Tina, not about her, and then he’d pouted while Sam laughed at him. Blaine didn’t remember Sam being so affected after he’d worn himself out channeling divine magic, but then, he also didn’t remember Sam being as adorable as Kurt was, so maybe his memory was faulty.

 

It had taken them a long time to get out of the fort and down to the wagon. Mercedes had come back much cleaner, with a bundle of filthy clothes and her cloak and boots mostly free of dirt and blood. She’d proceeded to clean off Kurt as well as she could without removing any clothes, and then they’d settled in to wait until he was able to stay awake long enough for them to leave. Blaine had been able to get a decent, if a bit short on detail, picture of what had led up to the two of them being buried in rock from Mercedes, and in exchange he and Sam had told her about their trip, which had, in comparison, been very boring right up until the dragon had shown up.

 

It had turned out that they hadn’t needed to worry about Kurt being upset by waking up in different clothes. When they were finally able to wake him up, he had been barely coherent, and Mercedes had done most of the work of undressing and redressing him. He’d been willing enough to follow her, though he had seemed completely mentally absent with exhaustion. Mercedes had eventually resorted to holding his hand firmly in hers to keep him upright and moving.

 

They’d been fortunate that the rest of Kurt and Mercedes’ group had left the wagon. Mercedes had set him up in his bedroll in the back of it when they reached the bottom, and Blaine still didn’t know if Kurt actually remembered any of the trip down the mountain, he’d been so out of it.

 

It was strange, Blaine thought. Some of the exhaustion and dissociation Kurt had shown could certainly be attributed to the Goddess using his body as a conduit, sure, but Blaine didn’t think all of it could. Blaine couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Sorin had done to him, but he kept it to himself. Sam seemed to have immediately developed an enormous crush on Mercedes and accepted everything she said at face value, and Mercedes herself looked worried enough every time she had checked on Kurt while he slept that Blaine knew she suspected something else was affecting him.

 

So he’d kept his mouth shut, and instead had watched Sam try to ingratiate himself with Mercedes. They hadn’t seen a single living thing beside themselves on the road for the first two or so days, but they’d woken up to a bear snuffling around the campsite on the third morning, and after that it was like they’d passed through an intangible barrier. They’d begun to see wildlife regularly, and Mercedes theorized that they’d been avoiding getting too close to the fort and the abomination that had lived there.

 

Blaine stole a look back at the wagon, where Mercedes to talking to Kurt with a gentle expression on her face, too quiet to hear. Mercedes spent a lot of time talking to Kurt out of earshot, now that he was awake. And hugging him. Kurt himself was an odd person, quiet and desperately sad, but kind and a little funny, when he actually talked. And really good looking, but that was just an observation. Mercedes had told them to be careful with him, and Kurt seemed like he could use some friends and support rather than someone awkwardly crushing on him, and Blaine was really good at being a friend.

 

While Sam had continued his efforts to impress Mercedes, Blaine had taken to talking to Kurt beside the campfire, telling him stories about the places he and Sam had gone and the more interesting of the things they’d done. Kurt always seemed grateful for the conversation, listening intently and sharing his own stories, but every now and then he would zone out and it would suddenly be like talking to a finely crafted doll, he was so unresponsive. Blaine had known that he’d been hurt by Sorin, but it had still been startling to see the evidence of it. It was only for seconds every time, and it didn’t happen every day, but it was still scary.

 

Kurt had been recovered from his bout of exhaustion for nearly two weeks when they reached the edges of the mountain range again and found themselves in plains. Blaine and Sam had come from the north when they had journeyed to the fort, but they turned south onto an old and barely used road now, entering new territory for all of them and pointing themselves towards the Plaguelands.

 

The first night out on the plains, they stopped for the night in a low lying area, hoping to mask their fire as much as they could in case of bandits or monsters. They would’ve gone without taking the risk of a fire, but the time for the first snows was overdue, and the bite in the air made it too cold to go through the night without one.

 

Blaine was brushing the horses down and setting up their nosebags with Sam when he saw it. Kurt had tugged up grass to make a fire pit and stacked wood, but instead of using flint and tinder like Blaine expected, a blue glow erupted from his visible skin, and he tossed a tiny ball of fiery magic into the bundled grass.

 

Blaine dropped his brush and froze, trying to process what he had just seen. He had wondered about Kurt’s class, and suspected he was a spellcaster, just from the stories he told, but neither he nor Mercedes had volunteered the information and he hadn’t asked. He could see why they hadn’t now, if Kurt really was what he looked like.

 

“Kurt?” he asked tentatively. “Um, did you just...Are you Spellscarred?” Kurt stiffened, and that was confirmation enough. Sam, who had been facing away from both of them, turned around sharply, and Mercedes was out of the wagon and between the two of them and Kurt so fast that Blaine was taken aback.

 

“Are we going to have a problem if he is?” she asked, a dangerous expression on her face. “Because it’s not his fault, and it’s not fair to judge him for it.”

 

“No, no,” Blaine said quickly. “There was a paladin in the Order who got Spellscarred, and she is the same person as she was before. We’re not ignorant.” He gave them a moment to digest that, and Mercedes nodded in acknowledgement. “We’re just, um, surprised is the best word, I guess, because I thought we were supposed to be immune. Isn’t that kind of the entire point of us?”

 

“I was a baby when it happened, and the magic wasn’t strong enough yet to stop it,” Kurt said quietly. He stood up and tugged his cloak off, tossing it carelessly on the ground, and unlaced the front of his tunic deliberately. He pulled on the collar, exposing the faintly shimmering blue scars that traced down the left side of his neck and disappeared down his back. “I should’ve told you earlier. I can cast a lot of really dangerous spells, and it’s been used against us already. You had a right to know.”

 

Blaine got stuck on ‘used against us already’, putting that together with him being ‘hurt’ by Sorin and not liking the answer.  “This is why the adventurers that were looking for us when we were babies disappeared?” Sam asked, stepping in when Blaine didn’t continue. “Did they do that to you?”

 

“No!” Kurt said quickly and loudly, as loudly as Blaine had ever heard him speak. He released his collar, letting the high neckline cover his scars again. “No,” he said more calmly. “The adventurers were my parents, and it was Sorin that did this to me. It’s why they didn’t find you, though. She betrayed them before they could find you two and they had to go into hiding or risk losing all of us.”

 

Blaine snapped his mouth shut. “You left that part out,” he said dumbly.

 

“We left a lot of parts out, actually,” Kurt said. “Some of the things that happened are kind of unpleasant to talk about, but we haven’t lied to you.” He retrieved his cloak, wrapping it back around his shoulders, and stepped up to stand beside Mercedes.

 

Blaine took a deep breath before speaking again, hoping to not come across as an asshole, but needing to know. “Are these things you left out going to come back to haunt us?” he asked. “Because if they are, I think we need to know.”

 

“They shouldn’t,” Mercedes said reassuringly. “You know what Sorin and Ylidihe want, and that there’s another group of us out there somewhere. The rest is just details.”

 

“Okay,” Blaine said, forcing a decisive nod. Curiosity itched at him, but it was none of his business, and the faint but grateful smile Kurt aimed at him made up for it. He bent to pick up his brush and went back to grooming the horse, exchanging a meaningful glance with Sam. “We’ll talk in a minute,” he whispered.

 

He could feel Kurt’s eyes on him intermittedly for what felt like a long time after, just peeking at him as he moved around the camp airing out bedrolls. Blaine steadfastly pretended not to notice. After Ana had been Scarred, she’d faced so much prejudice from outside the Order that it had nearly broken her, and she had been an adult. Judging from Mercedes’ defensive reaction and the resigned look that Kurt had had on his face, it had been much the same for him, and he’d only been a baby. He was entitled to a little paranoia.

 

“How bad do you think it was?” Sam mumbled, pitching his voice so it wouldn’t carry. “With Sorin and Kurt, I mean. Mercedes avoids the topic, but she looks scared sometimes when she’s with him.”

 

Blaine kept his head facing the horse, despite the urge to look at Sam. “What do you mean, scared? I haven’t noticed anything like that.”

 

“That’s because you’re only watching Kurt.” Blaine spluttered a little and Sam continued quickly, but Blaine could hear the teasing note in his voice despite the fact that he was barely audible. “Hey, no worries, I’ll admit that I’ve been mostly watching Mercedes. It’s not like she’s scared  _of_ him so much as just plain scared. I think she’s in over her head. Like, Kurt acts like a normal guy usually, y’know, but sometimes he’s just kind of  _off_. Have you noticed?”

 

“Yeah,” Blaine admitted. “I think that Mercedes was understating it a bit when she said that Sorin hurt him. Did you notice what he said about his magic being used against them?” Sam nodded slightly as he scooped grain from the feed sack. “What do you think we should do?”

 

He saw Sam shrug out of the corner of his eye as he attached the last feed bag. “I dunno. Be supportive? The Goddess sent us to them, it’s not like we don’t know that we can trust them, and I do like them. I think that maybe we just keep going the way we have, and try to take care of each other, and hopefully everything will work out.”

 

Blaine felt a little smile start at the corner of his mouth and spread as he considered Sam’s words. “That’s really...just really nice, Sam. I think Kurt is really starting to open up to me, too. He’s been talking more and more, at least, and I think that means we’re friends now. Have you managed to convince Mercedes that she should like you back yet? That handstand you did was really good, except for the whole falling on your head thing.”

 

Sam shot him a betrayed glare for bringing up his humiliation, but chose not to comment on it. Blaine knew he’d be getting it back at the first chance Sam got, but it was too funny to ignore. “Not yet,” he said instead. “I’m thinking about writing her a song, but I don’t want to make her feel awkward.”

 

“No, that’s totally romantic,” Blaine whispered. Mercedes glanced over at him from where she was boiling water in their pot over the fire, and he smiled at her. “You should, I’ll help.”

 

“I don’t know, dude, she’s got a lot going on and I really like talking to her. I don’t want to come on too strong and make her feel like I only want one thing from her, y’know? She’s really great.” Sam let out a tiny sigh. “Maybe when this is all over. That way, if she’s not interested and it gets awkward we aren’t stuck together.”

 

“I didn’t think of that,” Blaine admitted. “Good call, man.”

 

“I know,” Sam said, sounding proud of his foresight. He patted the horse they’d been standing beside on the neck and slipped around him. “Now, if we’re done, I’m going to go be supportive and tell Kurt that everything you’ve said to him goes for me, too.” He paused. “Unless you’ve been waxing poetic about his eyes. Because he seems like a nice guy, but I’m not really into him like that.”

 

Blaine stared hard at him. “What part of Mercedes telling us to be gentle with him did you miss?” he hissed. “I’m not into him. He needs friends. We’re  _friends_.”

 

“Okay, okay, my bad.” Sam raised his hands. “I’ve known you since we were kids though, Blaine. Every time Kurt makes a joke you look at him like he just saved your baby from a troll.”

 

“I do not,” Blaine said indignantly. So he appreciated Kurt’s sense of humour. That was because he was  _funny_ , not because Blaine was crushing on him.

 

“You totally do, dude, sorry.” Sam didn’t sound apologetic at all, and Blaine couldn’t help but wonder how the conversation had been so thoroughly derailed so quickly. They’d been talking about serious, actual issues, how had it come around to Sam teasing him?

 

“Whatever,” Blaine said dismissively. “They lost their home and their families, and they don’t know if the rest of their friends are alive or dead. I’m not sure either of them is at the best point in their life for romance.”

 

“Yeah, but I don’t know, Blaine,” Sam said, catching Blaine’s arm and stealing a glance to make sure neither Kurt or Mercedes was within earshot. “We could all die on this quest, tomorrow, even. I know I said I’d wait, and I will, because I want to believe we’ll make it, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking that if Mercedes gave me any indication she wanted to be with me now that I wouldn’t jump for it. We have no guarantee we’ll come back if we die, and while I’m willing to lay down my life for the cause, I’m going to take every chance for happiness I get before then.”

 

Blaine looked at him but didn’t answer, and Sam squeezed his arm in a friendly way before letting go. “Think about it,” he said. “Kurt can make his own decisions, and if you both want to be friends forever, be friends. But don’t lie to yourself.”

 

Sam turned and walked away after Kurt, who had headed off to a nearby small copse of trees after he’d finished with everyone’s bedrolls, presumably to gather more firewood, leaving Blaine and Mercedes alone in camp.

 

Blaine unstrapped his sword from his hip and pulled his shield off his back, laying them down on the ground beside the fire and crouching beside Mercedes. “Anything I can do to help?” he offered.

 

“Stay there for a minute,” she said. “I need to talk to you.” She stirred the pot of oatmeal she was making, bits of dried fruit dotting the surface. They hadn’t had much variety in their diet and Blaine was really hoping that they’d hit a town or something soon so they could get something,  _anything_ , that wasn’t oats or dried.

 

“Okay,” he said. “I’m all ears.”

 

“So you know now that Kurt uses magic, but not like a wizard.” Mercedes looked at him, and Blaine nodded in acknowledgement. “People are scared of it, and while we’re in the wilderness and only coming across the odd goblin it’s not such a big deal, but we talked about it and decided that he shouldn’t use his magic if we come across any people. A lot of people don’t understand, and them seeing Kurt use Spellplague magic could get us into a lot more fights than we need. And it’ll make him a target. Everyone wants to be able to say that they killed an abomination, and I don’t think they care if it’s really true or not.”

 

“Okay, that makes sense,” Blaine agreed. “I wouldn’t have thought of it, but I guess you guys have been dealing with it a lot longer. So, what, he’ll only use it if he has to defend himself? I don’t quite understand why you’re telling me this like it’s a secret.”

 

“Even before everything that’s happened, Kurt never liked fighting. The first time he ever cast accidentally cast a spell at me while we were practicing, he locked himself in his room for days and sulked. With Sorin- well, okay. When we’d get into fights with goblins and stuff, Kurt would go for the flashy spell that distracted, but didn’t hurt much.  Before...before  _this_ , I was the only person besides maybe his dad who knew how dangerous he could be with his magic. He hid it, because people were already looking for a reason to drive him out of town, and because he doesn’t want to hurt people. You follow?” She looked at him seriously, and Blaine shook his head.

 

“Not really, sorry. Are you saying that he won’t defend himself?”

 

 “No, he will. What I’m saying is, he might not be that effective at it. We’re both used to fighting in a big group, but I’ve got a lot more experience at actually fighting one-on-one and using everything I have at my disposal than he does. He needs time to cast, and it’s his only line of defense besides that little dagger he carries. If we get into a fight, I’ll need some help making sure he doesn’t get killed. Once was enough.”

 

“Oh,” Blaine said. “Oh, well, obviously, of course. That’s what we’re supposed to do, make sure people don’t get killed. Sam and I are really good at it.”

 

“Good to hear,” Mercedes said, going back to her pot. “Of course, we’ll be trying to keep you two safe as well. We all need each other, and we really do like you guys.” She smiled at him, a little bit of the stress that Blaine hadn’t really noticed before lifting from her.

 

Blaine smiled back widely. “We like you guys too. I know it’s been pretty rough for you both, but I really admire the way you’re pushing through everything.”

 

Mercedes’ smile faded a little. “We’re trying. You and Sam being with us has helped a lot. And at least we have a goal, something to work for. I just keep telling myself that we have a chance, that the Goddess will keep her word and bring all the people who died at Lilsholm back if we destroy the Heart.”

 

Blaine patted her on the back and smiled at her reassuringly. “She will. She’s never led me astray before, and I have a lot of faith in her.” He stood up stretching out his legs. “That looks like it’s almost done, do you want me to go get Kurt and Sam?”

 

“Yes, please, I’ll-” Mercedes was interrupted by Sam whooping loudly in warning from where he was hidden in the trees, and the loud clash of steel on steel. Blaine tossed his cloak to the ground and gave Mercedes a hand up. She ran for the wagon and pulled out the small warhammer that Sam had loaned her while Blaine swept up his sword and shield, and together they ran for the trees, the sounds of a pitched battle echoing out to them.

 

~*~

 

Kurt broke a thick branch off of a dead tree, adding it to the pile he was making. They had a healthy supply of firewood, but there was still room for more, and now that they were out of the forested mountains it was good to save as much wood as they could, or they would get cold at night. Not that it wasn’t cold all the time, this time of year.

 

He didn’t want to be there. Not just standing in the middle of a tiny grove of trees gathering wood, but he didn’t want to spend his days on a bouncing wagon seat, trying to talk to Mercedes. It was easier than it had been, at least, but that wasn’t saying much. Every lasting suggestion that Sorin had left in his head seemed to have been stripped clean by his death, so he could talk about Lilsholm, talk about the Goddess without visions of fire and death appearing in front of his eyes, and his memories felt less immediate, like he was watching awful things happen instead of doing them, but it wasn’t much better, if he was being honest. He still didn’t want to talk about them, it was just less horrific to consider talking about them.

 

Mercedes was trying so hard, though, and Kurt couldn’t ignore that. Their conversations were mostly one-sided when the topic turned to Sorin, but he tried to respond. It was just...hard. Everything was. Waking up in the morning, falling asleep at night, even eating. Mercedes had noticed that almost immediately, and he was grateful to her for forcing him to eat. Fortunately, they didn’t have any meat that wasn’t dried. Kurt didn’t want to think about the smell of meat cooking over a fire.

 

Talking to Blaine was easier, because he didn’t know much. Kurt wasn’t stupid, he knew that Blaine was going to find out most everything eventually because that was how his life worked, but he enjoyed it while he could, listening to Blaine share stories of his continuing campaign of one-upmanship with Sam and pretending that he didn’t want to be back under that pile of rock.

 

Death had been easy.

 

“Hey,” a voice said from behind him. Kurt jerked and fumbled his armload of branches, dropping them to the ground. He whirled around to see Sam, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. “Sorry, sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you.”

 

“It’s fine,” Kurt said. “Is something wrong?”

 

“No,” Sam said with an easy smile. “I just came to help. It’s Mercedes’ turn to cook, and I don’t want to get in her way, and I think Blaine was helping her anyway.” Kurt nodded and moved to one side, allowing Sam access to the tree while he picked up the wood he’d dropped. They worked in silence for a moment, until Sam said, “We really don’t care, you know. About the Spellscar thing. It doesn’t change anything.”

 

Kurt nodded, but didn’t look at him. Everyone cared about the “Spellscar thing”. If he lost control while he was casting, or had control taken from him, he could kill someone without meaning to, had killed people without wanting to. “Thanks,” he said finally, leaving it at that and hoping Sam would too.

 

Sam looked at him and carefully patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to help you feel better.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” Kurt said quickly. Sam didn’t need to be sorry. Sam had been nothing but kind. Kurt was the one who- No. He wasn’t allowed to think that way anymore. He forced a smile and looked up at Sam. “It’s just hard to talk about.”

 

Sam nodded. “Just, if you want to, I’m good at listening but not so good with solutions. So if you ever need to vent, I’m here.”

 

“Thanks, Sam,” Kurt said, keeping his smile up. He never would, but the offer was nice. He searched for something to reciprocate with. “If you, um, ever want to talk about Mercedes, I guess I could listen to that.”

 

Sam smiled ruefully. “I’m pretty obvious, aren’t I?”

 

“You did a handstand and you follow her around more than I do, which is actually pretty impressive, considering that I’ve apparently developed separation anxiety. I think the only one of us who doesn’t know is Mercedes, and that’s because she’s been working so hard to hold me together.” Kurt couldn’t keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. Everything they did, every conversation they had, they were all about Sorin and the things he’d done. Mercedes and Sam would be adorable together, could be adorable together, if it weren’t for him. He could take himself out of the way, but-  _No_. “You should tell her how you feel,” He announced abruptly. “She won’t talk to me about it, but I know her better than anyone else in the world. She likes you too.”

 

Sam’s expression brightened like Kurt had just told him that the Goddess had come back to life and they didn’t have to go into the Plaguelands after all. “She does?” he said ebulliently. “Really?”

 

Kurt didn’t get a chance to answer. A branch cracked nearby like someone had trod on it the same instant as he opened his mouth to respond, and suddenly he was pressed up against the tree trunk, Sam pushing him down to his knees with one hand while he fumbled with his shield buckles with the other. “Who’s there?” he called sharply. Under his breath, he muttered. “We’ve got eight, no, nine, at least, I can see them now. Brown cloaks, probably bandits. We’re not getting out of this without a fight.”

 

Kurt’s heart was racing, and his brain, his stupid, traitorous brain, kept slipping back to Lilsholm, remembering how right it had felt to wield his magic against people, how easy it had been. Not even the Goddess could alter the memories of how he’d felt when he’d killed those people, and he’d been happy, thanks to Sorin’s iron grip on his actions and emotions. He knew he couldn’t use his strongest magic again, not against people who would scream and wither and burn. Maybe though, maybe he could use the spells he had that wouldn’t burn and he would be okay, he could hold himself in the present.

 

Sam’s gloved hand patted his cheek silently but urgently, and Kurt slid back into awareness, running a hand over the hilt of his dagger to make sure it was in its sheath.

 

“We won’t surrender,” Sam announced. “You’re in over your heads.”

 

“Such bravado,” a man’s voice called back, quietly mocking. “Is the danger that you’ll cower against that tree some more?”

 

“I know your type,” Sam said, deadly serious. “You hide behind numbers because you’re afraid of a fair fight, and you bring bows so that you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”

 

“How about you stop talking and just put down your sword, little boy, and we’ll let you live?” a different man said, this one from off to the side. They were fanning out to surround them, and the tree wouldn’t offer enough cover if they had bows, not nearly.

 

“There might be too many for just me,” Sam admitted quietly. From his position on his knees, Kurt couldn’t see much, but he could hear them. He pushed himself off the ground into a squat. He could deal with them. He could kill them all. Hypothetically, at least. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to bring himself to do it.

 

If Sam couldn’t take them, and he was near useless in a fight, and Blaine and Mercedes were at the very edge of earshot, there were only three options: Surrender, which wasn’t a choice at all, try to fight them, which would probably end in death and he didn’t want to get Sam killed, or stall until they could get help. “Play along,” he whispered.

 

Kurt tugged the ties of his cloak loose, letting it hang forward to shadow his hands. As subtly as he could, which wasn’t very, to be honest, his skin glowed when he used magic, he cast a tiny spell and held it in his hand.

 

“We surrender,” he announced, standing up. “Please don’t kill us.”

 

“Good,” the first man said, stepping out from behind a nearby tree. “Lie down, face down, and put your arms above your head.”

 

The spell he was holding tickled his palm, beginning to pulse as the magic tried to pull itself apart against Kurt’s grip. “Trust me,” he whispered to Sam as they lay down. “I have a plan. Cover your eyes, and get ready to move.”

 

Sam nodded almost imperceptibly, and together they waited on the ground for the approach. Sam grunted as someone stepped on his back, and Kurt took that as his cue. Hoping that they were all watching him, he tossed the spell up into the air with a twitch of his wrist and squeezed his eyes shut. It would silently explode into a blindingly bright ball of dancing lights, and that would allow them to reclaim the element of surprise.

 

Kurt gave it a second to mostly clear, then leapt up into the man holding Sam down, pushing him backwards. Sam was up in one smooth motion, drawing his sword with one hand and grabbing Kurt with the other, pulling him back and away from the man he’d hit. Sam swung hard, cutting deep into the man’s chest as he staggered backwards, then whirled away, letting out a loud yell and hauling his unbuckled shield off his back and onto his arm.

 

Blood gushed out of the gaping wound across the man’s chest, running down and mixing with the dirt at his feet. The phantom memory of his dad slumping against him filled his mind, and Kurt had to force himself to turn his head, just in time for an arrow to rip painfully along his arm.

 

Another arrow buzzed off Sam’s shield as he fought two of the bandits at once, and Kurt spun around behind a tree to get cover as another arrow narrowly missed him. Sam had armour. He did not, and he wasn’t allowed to die. If they didn’t see him cast, most of his spells could pass as wizard spells that he’d learned from Artie, except for the colour, but he didn’t have much choice. Sam couldn’t fight all of them on his own.

 

Kurt began to cast the spell that allowed him to sap the target’s energy. It had worked against that abomination, and it was a lot more subtle than any of his fire spellsHe was barely halfway through when a rough hand reached around and jerked him out from behind the tree, flinging him up against the trunk.

 

“I bet you think you’re really clever,” the bandit said, leaning in close enough that Kurt could see the veins in his eyes. “Pretending to surrender and then attacking. You think you’re the first one to try that?”

 

Sam had taken down one of the bandits he’d been fighting, but two more had taken his place. Kurt wouldn’t be getting any help from him. He tried to throw his hand up towards the man’s bare face to use his spell, but the man grabbed his wrist and smashed it back against the tree. The magic popped and sizzled as Kurt lost control of it, burning his skin and dissolving into the air.

 

It burned the man’s hand as well though, and he released Kurt’s wrist and jerked back. “What in hell was that?” he demanded, and Sam looked over quickly in concern. Kurt ripped his dagger out of its sheath with his uninjured left hand, and drove it home in the man’s gut before he had time to think about what he was doing.

 

He kept his grip on the hilt as the man staggered back, eyes wide and shocked, pulling the dagger out of him. Kurt had barely a second to consider that he was open to the archers again, that they wouldn’t fire at Sam anymore and risk hitting their allies but that he was fair game, and he dropped to the ground, scrambling back around the tree to find cover as two arrows thudded into the tree trunk above him.

 

His hand burned, but he couldn’t stop. He had to protect Sam. He dashed out from behind his tree, dagger tightly clenched, and went for the archers, moving as quickly as he could and casting his vampire spell again as he went. The first one he reached dropped her bow and grabbed her sword when Kurt charged at her, but he was faster, slapping her across the face with his spell and stabbing her in the throat with his dagger. He felt a rush of energy from the spell that buzzed through his injured hand and up into the rest of him, soothing the burns and the arrow wound and making him more alert.

 

The woman burbled at his feet as she died, and Kurt swept up her bow and grabbed an arrow. He was no Quinn, but he did remember his basic training from his brief foray into working as a ranger under Sue Sylvester. He took careful aim at an archer across the small clearing he and Sam were in, waiting for the man to notice him and move his aim away from Sam before he fired.

 

The arrow sunk into the bandit’s gut, and he released his bowstring as he fell, sending an arrow whizzing past Kurt harmlessly. Kurt grabbed another arrow and took aim, just as Sam jolted as an arrow from an archer that neither of them had seen sunk into his shoulder, and his shield arm drooped uselessly. Kurt changed his aim to fire past Sam and into one of the bandits he was fighting, but the pain slowed Sam down and he couldn’t defend himself. A hard blow from a mace landed on his sword arm with a crack, and his sword slipped from his fingers as he howled in pain.

 

Blaine blew past the tree and into the bandits like he’d been shot by a catapult, attacking viciously. Mercedes came from a different angle, attacking the archer who’d shot Sam with a sharp heavy swing of her warhammer, and Kurt fumbled for another arrow in the dead woman’s quiver to support them. He made the mistake of looking down at her when he did, and froze.

 

She stared sightlessly up at him, eyes half-lidded and dead. A burn in the shape of his hand stood out in sharp relief against her skin on her face, and the ugly stab wound on the side of her neck glistened wetly and steamed slightly in the chilly air. Memories of all the faces of people he had killed blurred together until he could see them all on the dead woman’s face. But he didn’t feel the way he had thought he would.

 

He’d thought that if he ever had to hurt someone again that it would bring him to his knees, but he’d just killed four people, and it didn’t hurt at all. It was what he had to do to keep himself and Sam alive to fulfill their task, and nothing more. He felt hollow, tired, but almost peaceful.

 

Kurt pulled an arrow out of her quiver and nocked it, shooting the last archer just as he loosed a shot that Blaine deflected with his shield. The clearing fell silent for an instant when he fell, and then Mercedes rushed to Sam’s side, helping him down to his knees. Blaine held Sam still while Mercedes braced herself and ripped out the arrow in his shoulder. Sam screamed in pain, but Mercedes immediately launched into healing prayers, and within moments he was blinking away the tears of pain and massaging his healed broken arm.

 

Kurt stood and watched calmly, feeling like he was a hundred miles away from them rather than twenty feet. He crouched and retrieved his dagger, wiping the blade off on the dead bandit’s tunic and sheathing it. He considered the blood on his hand for a moment, and then wiped it on the dead woman as well, standing back up and walking over to stand beside Mercedes as Blaine helped Sam up.

 

“Are you okay?” Mercedes asked.

 

Kurt took a moment to take stock of himself. His hand was no longer burned, and the arrow wound was mostly closed, thanks to the vampire spell, and everything was quiet in his head.

 

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “I’m fine.”

 

~*~

 

Blaine and Mercedes followed the trail the bandits left back to their camp, leaving Sam and Kurt to watch their own camp. They found enough supplies to replenish their own, taking as much as they could carry and planning to bring the wagon back in the morning.

 

“What were they doing out here, though?” Blaine wondered aloud. “There’s nothing here. It just seems ridiculous.”

 

Mercedes shrugged. “Sam said they yelled at him to surrender. Maybe they were slavers?”

 

“Still though, it’s not like there are people out here.”

 

She shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine, honestly Blaine. It’s kind of weird that they have all these supplies and no horses or wagons to carry them in though. I wonder how they got them all out here...” she trailed off as an awful thought struck her. “It’s almost like they were waiting, isn’t it. And like they were dropped here, with a bunch of supplies and orders to capture anyone who came by.”

 

“They aren’t bandits?” Blaine said. “They’re working for Ylidihe?”

 

“Maybe,” she said. “Either way, I think we could be in trouble.”

 

They double-timed it back to their own camp, only to find Kurt and Sam sitting beside the fire with a stranger who had his back to them. They dumped the supplies and slowed down, approaching cautiously.

 

“Hey, Blaine, Mercedes,” Sam said cheerfully when he spotted them. “Check it out, we found our missing number fifteen.”

 

“Wait, what?” Mercedes asked. “How?”

 

The stranger turned around and grinned at her. “It was really more a case of me finding you,” he said. “Long time no see, Mercedes. How have you been?”

 

Mercedes felt her mouth drop open and closed it with a snap. Matt Rutherford smiled broader and stood up. “Matt? You’re the one we were missing?”

 

“Yeah,” he said ruefully. “I couldn’t stay in that ridiculous town any longer, but I had a dream about a month ago, and the Goddess told me to come find you. So, here I am. Sam and Kurt kind of filled me in on everything she didn’t tell me already, and now I guess I’m just here to help.”

 

“It is so good to see you,” Mercedes said, stepping forward to give him a hug. “We really missed you.”

 

“The Goddess told me what happened to Lilsholm,” Matt said quietly as she hugged him. “I hated the place, but my family was there. Sorin’s going to pay for what she did.”

 

“I’m sorry Matt,” Mercedes whispered. “We tried to stop it.”

 

“It’s not your fault, or anyone’s but Sorin’s,” Matt said, patting her on the back and then stepping back. “We’re going to beat her.”

 

“This might be the most I’ve ever heard you say,” Mercedes laughed, wiping the dampness from her eyes.

 

“Well, it’s been a while,” Matt said, still with a little smile on his face. “I’ve changed.”

 

~*~

 

Matt had changed. He was overly friendly with Kurt, ignoring all the signs that he was uncomfortable to throw an arm around him or make a joke, and painstakingly polite to the paladins, while the Matt she’d known would’ve behaved in the opposite way. Mercedes couldn’t help but wonder what exactly he’d been doing in the months since they’d seen each other, because working as a caraven guard couldn’t have such an effect on someone’s personality, she was sure of it.

 

Travel was easier with him there, at least. Five people meant that every night two people didn’t have to take a shift on watch, which meant everyone was better rested, and that there were more people to split the campsite chores. They kept heading south, but not fast enough to outrun the winter. Snow caught up to them three days after Matt, but fortunately it wasn’t deep enough to really slow them down.

 

Kurt had stopped following her around so much. Mercedes realized it when the snow started and he stayed sitting on the wagon seat beside Sam rather than hop down to walk in it with her, and it was impossible to not notice how Blaine was doing all the talking when they sat together at night unless he was asked a direct question. Blaine had taken to giving Kurt little concerned looks and then looking at her, but she didn’t have any answers either.

 

She wasn’t sure if his withdrawal had started with the bandits or with Matt’s arrival, but it was worrying. She woke up more and more often to him creeping back into the wagon at night, cold and not dressed for the snow, but when she asked where he went the next morning he never seemed to remember leaving. She’d tried tying their wrists together one night to keep him with her, but she’d woken up all the same to him crawling back into bed. She had no idea how she was getting past whoever was on watch either, but no one else had said anything to her about it.

 

Kurt wasn’t her only problem either, though he was her most serious one at the moment. Sam had taken to trying to do feats of agility and strength, and he kept hurting himself. On top of that, he and Blaine seemed to have taken up songwriting, but neither of them were particularly good at it. They were producing songs that sounded like the time Rachel had been drunk and sad and tried to write an ode to her wineglass, except directed toward girls. It was ridiculous that Mercedes often found herself watching them with a smile, straining to try and catch traces of lyrics. So it wasn’t really much of a problem after all, Mercedes concluded, because even healing Sam’s minor injuries was an excuse to spend some time with him.

 

Sam finally pulled her off to the side one night, leading her behind the wagon and leaning in conspiratorially. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “So Kurt told me I should tell you this instead of just pulling out all my best moves to impress you a while ago, but I thought I should give it a little more time. I really, really like you Mercedes, and I think you’re really special. And I know we might all die, like, really soon, and that you have a lot going on right now with Kurt and everything, and I just wanted to let you know.”

 

Mercedes stared at him, stunned. “Sam,” she whispered, a smile spreading across her face. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

 

“How could I not?” he whispered fiercely. “If Blaine wasn’t totally gay and also carrying a huge tragic torch for Kurt, I’m pretty sure that we would’ve had to duel over you by now. We might have to anyway. He was getting really...creative with his rhymes towards the end of our songwriting sessions.”

 

Mercedes frowned. “What sort of ‘creative’? Okay, you know what, never mind. He told you he’s carrying a huge tragic torch for Kurt?”

 

“Well, no, he says they’re friends, which is good I think, because I’m pretty sure that Kurt isn’t really okay these days. I think I mostly just like them both and want them to be happy.” Sam shrugged. “Blaine wouldn’t make any kind of a move until Kurt’s better, if he does like him that way. He’s not the kind of guy to take advantage, don’t worry.”

 

“Good,” Mercedes said. “I didn’t think he was.” Sam touched her arm gently, and she was abruptly reminded of what they were actually talking about. “Oh, right, duels. And songs. Well, I always have sort of had a thing for a knight in shining armour, Sam, especially one that’s as good a person as you.” She smiled up at him and stood on her tiptoes to give him a regretful kiss on the cheek. “But we can’t have any more distractions right now. Once we get closer to the Plaguelands, we’re going to have to be looking out for Sorin and Ylidihe every step of the way. When this is over, if we still want to be together, we can be. But not now. We can’t fail at this, not with so many people counting on us.”

 

“I kind of knew you’d say that,” Sam said ruefully. “And I can wait.” He leaned down to reciprocate the kiss on her cheek, and grinned slightly when he pulled away. “We should probably go back to the others now,” he whispered. “They’re going to start to wonder.”

 

“As if,” she scoffed. “Maybe Matt would notice if we disappeared. Maybe.”

 

~*~

 

According to Blaine’s map, the plains would come to an end eventually, and they would reach what had been an elven forest before the Spellplague. Then it would take them almost a month of following a road that wound along a river through the forest, and then back out onto the plains until they reached the Plaguelands.

 

They’d spotted the dark smudge of leafless treetops days before they reached the border of the forest, and the road had met up with the river a week before. When they finally reached the top of the last swell of prairie before the forest, they were struck speechless by the sight.

 

The trees appeared to simply erupt from the grasslands rather than a smooth transition, thick trunks rising hundreds of feet into the air. Even at a distance, the ancient elven magic that imbued the forest with a certain sense of peace and serenity could be felt, and it only got stronger as they approached. The elves were gone, and had been for a century, but their magic lingered.

 

Mercedes touched Kurt’s hand, and he smiled at her, just a tiny curve of his lips, but it was something. “It’s nice,” he said. “It feels nice.”

 

Sam was staring at the forest with an open mouth and shining eyes. “Gods,” he said reverently. “Can you imagine what it must have been like when the elves lived here?” His smile lit up his entire face, and Mercedes realized that she wasn’t exactly being subtle with her staring at him just as he spoke again. “I’ve read so many stories about what these forests were like, it’s surreal to actually see one.”

 

Blaine grinned at him indulgently, apparently well-used to Sam’s hero worship of elves. Matt was looking at the forest pensively, and Mercedes nudged him. “Is there something wrong?”

 

“No, definitely not,” Matt said with a grin. “Just kind of struck dumb, y’know? Those trees are really big.”

 

“Yeah,” said Mercedes, looking back at the forest. “I know the feeling.”

 

The trees seemed even larger when they down beside them, and entering the forest was like passing through an intangible border as well as the physical one. It was warmer in the trees, and there was a sense of being watched that came from transitioning to the close forest after so many days on the open prairie. The sound of the nearby river was constant, even if they couldn’t see it, the water too deep and fast running to freeze all the way through.

 

When they stopped around midday for food, Mercedes slung the straps of their empty waterskins over her shoulder and led the wagon horses to the river. Blaine was there a few minutes later with his and Sam’s horses, and he knelt beside her to help her fill the waterskins.

 

“I’m worried about Kurt,” he said without preamble, pitching his voice so it wouldn’t carry back to the wagon. “He doesn’t talk anymore, and he’s been looking more and more tired.”

 

“I know,” Mercedes said. “I don’t know what happened. He was doing better, and then I think something happened when those bandits attacked, or maybe it’s even got something to do with Matt. He’s been wandering off at night, and I don’t know where he’s going.”

 

“Do you think he maybe feels bad about the bandits, or whoever they were? You said that he didn’t like to hurt people before, but he killed five of them.”

 

“He knows it was self-defence though. He was more worried about Sam getting hurt after than he was about them dying.” Mercedes paused and looked at Blaine. “I mean, it’s definitely possible that you’re right, but it could also be as simple as he was getting used to having just the three of us around and Matt’s making him uncomfortable. It’s been an adjustment for me, too.”

 

Blaine opened his mouth slightly, looking like he was going to say something uncharitable, then closed it again. “What?” Mercedes asked.

 

“What’s Matt’s problem? Like, I know you grew up with the guy, but he’s kind of a jerk.” Blaine twisted his mouth apologetically as he put the lid back on the last waterskin.

 

“I don’t know,” Mercedes admitted. “He was never close with Kurt and me, but he’s different now. I kind of wish the Goddess could talk to us right now, because I’d really like some reassurance.”

 

“How long do you think it’ll be before she can intervene again? Did she say?” Blaine stood up, picking up two of the waterskins and taking his and Sam’s horses bridles.

 

“No, I don’t think even she knew. She raised the dead, and that hasn’t happened since before the Spellplague. It’s a new thing for all of us.” Mercedes shrugged. “We’re on our own.”

 

~*~

 

They were almost a week into the forest and Blaine was on watch the night he first noticed that Kurt had left. He had just walked a circuit of their camp and was sitting beside the fire when he thought to do a head count and came up with only three full bedrolls in the wagon. A single set of fresh human tracks in the snow led away from camp and Blaine frowned, quickly checking to see who was missing. Sam got up about twice a night to get a drink of water or relieve himself, so it was possible there was nothing to be concerned about. If it was Kurt though, like Mercedes had said, maybe Blaine could find out what was wrong.

 

He wasn’t sure if he should be grateful that he could maybe find out how he could help him or even more worried when peered at the faces in the bedrolls and realized Kurt was the one who’d wandered off. He picked his sword up from where it had been resting beside the fire, belting it on. Better safe than sorry. Just because they hadn’t run into trouble yet in these woods, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t.

 

He found Kurt at the edge of the river, standing too close to the rocky edge of the bank and the icy water for comfort and looking up at the cloudy sky, the moon breaking through at time to glint off the snow and illuminate the area. The sounds of the swift flow of water and the crunch of Blaine’s footsteps were loud in the night time hush, but Kurt showed no sign of hearing his approach. “Kurt?” he asked. “What are you doing out here? Are you okay?”

 

“Do you think it hurts?” Kurt didn’t move to acknowledge Blaine’s presence, keeping his eyes trained on the clouds. “Dying,” he elaborated. “Do you think it hurts to die?”

 

“I don’t know,” Blaine said slowly. Kurt was really close to the edge, and he’d inched forward even closer to it when he spoke. Blaine moved slowly forward, trying to get close enough to grab Kurt if he fell but not startle him into stumbling forward. “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted, trying to keep Kurt talking. “But I don’t know.”

 

“It doesn’t, not really,” Kurt said softly. “Not as much as I expected it to. It did at first, but then it was just quiet.” Kurt looked down at the water, twitching in surprise like he’d just realized how close he was to the edge. “Oh. When did I get out here?”

 

“You were gone when I came back from patrol,” Blaine said, closing the last few feet between them. He could reach out and grab Kurt if he needed to. “Kurt...” he trailed off. What did you say to someone who stood at the edge of a drop into a half-frozen river like he would throw himself into it given the slightest reason? Instead, he reached out and touched Kurt’s hand gently, leaving his hand there for a moment.

 

“What was it like, growing up knowing that one day the Goddess would call on you and you couldn’t say no?” Kurt still didn’t look at him, but Blaine took the invitation to talk for what it was.

 

“It was scary, sometimes,” he said honestly. “Like, being eight and knowing that there’s a god watching your every move, and that you have to go into the Plaguelands when she decides it’s time? I didn’t always like the idea, but Sam was always excited. He would read stories about elves all the time, and I think he still believes that if we succeed in destroying the heart they’ll come back from where they went after the Spellplague.”

 

“Sam really does like elves, doesn’t he?” Kurt asked. “He was so excited about a real life elven forest, even though there aren’t elves here anymore.” Blaine could hear a note of a smile in his voice, but it was gone when he next spoke. “Was the Order good to you?”

 

Blaine frowned slightly, carefully phrasing his response. “They were, in most ways. We were trained well, and allowed to see our families, but sometimes I think that the older paladins used to manipulate us a bit, to be truthful. Like, they would tell Sam all about elves, and how amazing they were, and how great he was for helping them come back, and they would tell me, um, that...” Blaine trailed off, embarrassed, but Kurt just waited patiently. Blaine gathered his courage and took a deep breath.

 

“Okay. So when I was little, I used to really like reading about Sofie and Sasha. Did you ever read those stories?” Kurt shook his head. “Sofie was a knight, and Sasha was a wizard, and they had adventures together. And, like, when someone tried to beat up Sasha at close range, Sofie would defend her, and when Sofie was in trouble, Sasha would always be there for her, and their skills complemented each other perfectly, and I used to daydream about how one day I would meet a wizard, and the two of us could be just like them. And so, um, whenever I was feeling hesitant, about anything really, the older paladins would remind me that a least one of the rest of the Goddess’ chosen would be a magic-user, and that maybe one of them would want to be Sasha.”

 

“And being manipulated like that, you were never angry? Did you ever want to just...run away, leave them behind?” Kurt was still staring down into the water and hadn’t physically acknowledged Blaine except to shake his head. An undercurrent of anger in Kurt’s tone made Blaine wonder if they were actually talking about Blaine’s childhood, or about Kurt.

 

“I was, sometimes, and I did, once, but it didn’t help. Running doesn’t help, Kurt.” He left ‘ _So please come away from the edge’_ unspoken.

 

“I can’t run anyway,” Kurt said, resigned like he’d considered it at length. “There’s nowhere I can go that she can’t find me.”

 

Blaine reached out again, taking Kurt’s hand. Kurt immediately intertwined their fingers and squeezed desperately tight. “I don’t know exactly what Sorin did to you, Kurt, but I promise you, so long as I’m around, she will never touch you again.”

 

Kurt choked out a laugh, a harsh, bitter sound. “I’m not talking about Sorin. She can’t find me anymore, your Goddess made sure of that.”

 

Kurt’s grip loosened, and Blaine held on tighter in a sudden fear that Kurt was going to take the final step forward into the off the ledge and into the water. “Who, then?” he asked quickly, “Who would you be running from?”

 

Kurt didn’t answer for a long moment, but neither did he try to pull his grip away. “I killed my father,” he said, so quietly that Blaine could barely hear the anguish in his voice. “Sorin was in my head, she made me think that I was doing the right thing, but it was still my hands holding the knife, I still watched him choke on his own blood.” He raised his free hand to his neck, digging his fingers into the nearly invisible blue scars on the left side of it. “And then she used me, the twisted magic inside me, to kill so many other people. Ylidihe destroyed most of Lilsholm, but Sorin took a special joy in having me murder the people who couldn’t defend themselves. The children, especially. They were...” Kurt swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut, scratching viciously at his Spellscar with his fingernails.

 

Blaine stood there still for a moment, until a trickle of blood down Kurt’s neck snapped him out of his shocked horror enough to grab Kurt’s hand and stop him from tearing at himself. “Kurt, stop, you’re bleeding.” He whispered a tiny healing prayer, keeping a grip on Kurt’s hand as he stroked the side of his neck with his fingertips. The scratches closed, leaving only traces of blood.

 

Kurt turned to look at him at that, his eyes sparkling blue with magic, even in the dark. “I shouldn’t have said that. They’re not your burden to bear.” Before Blaine could summon up a protest, Kurt was continuing. “There was something else inside my head too,” he said. “The whole time Sorin was making me do things, awful things, and tearing my mind apart for fun, there was another voice, telling me to go along with it, that it would be okay, that she would protect me.”

 

Blaine nodded slowly, comprehension dawning. “The Goddess?” he asked. But, why would she stand by as one of her servants was forced to kill children? It went against everything he knew of her.

 

Kurt nodded. “So we escaped from Sorin, and we found that fort. And I had exhausted all the magic I had fighting the monster we found down there, and then it killed Mercedes as she killed it. I don’t really remember a lot after that, but I remember that the voices came back. And then Sorin showed up, but I know you saw her.”

 

“Yeah,” Blaine said. “She and Ylidihe left as we arrived. But, Mercedes died before you? I thought that Sorin...?”

 

“Sorin didn’t kill either of us,” Kurt said calmly. “If one of us, any of the fifteen of us, dies, the magic that the Goddess put inside of them goes to her, and she can use it. When Mercedes died, she suddenly had power again, but not enough to really do anything. She needed another one of us to die, and she chose me.” Blaine dropped Kurt’s hands in shock, his breath coming fast and panicky.

 

“That’s impossible,” he whispered. “She would never, she wouldn’t, she’s  _good_ , she’s  _protecting_  us, I can’t...”

 

“She promised me that everything, every _one_ , would be okay if I did it, and that I could go to sleep. I was so tired, I still am so tired, so she gave me the magic, and I collapsed the tunnel on myself.” Kurt’s eyes still glittered blue, but his arms hung limp by his side and his expression was full of a soul-deep pain. “I thought it was over. I wanted- I wanted so  _badly_  for it to be over.”

 

Blaine searched Kurt’s face for some hint that he might be lying, but found nothing. Blaine’s hands were trembling, and he clenched them into fists. “How could she do that?” he whispered, more to himself than to Kurt. “That’s despicable, how could she ask you to do that?”

 

Kurt shrugged, not offering any real explanation. “She needed the magic. I don’t know what she used it for, other than bringing back Mercedes and me, but she promised that she would bring back everyone that died at Lilsholm when we destroyed the heart of the Spellplague, that everyone would be okay. After what I did, how could I refuse?” Kurt shrugged again, averting his eyes. “It wasn’t a difficult choice. If obeying means that I can have my father again, that all the people Sorin and Ylidihe killed will return to life, I’ll do whatever she orders. But...” Kurt edged backwards slightly, sliding a little on the loose rock of the bank

 

“Kurt,” Blaine whispered. “Kurt, stop, please stop.” He reached out slowly, not wanting to startle him into taking the final step back, and latched onto Kurt’s biceps.

 

“Even if I jumped in this river, I’d probably wake up lying next to Mercedes back at camp,” Kurt said dully, leaning back slightly against Blaine’s grip. “I was dead, Blaine. I wanted to be dead. And she gave that to me, and then she took it away again. There are fifteen of us. What harm would it have done to let me stay dead? What good is an abomination to fight abominations?”

 

“You are  _not_ an abomination,” Blaine said fiercely, squeezing Kurt’s arms until he looked up to Blaine’s eyes. “An abomination couldn’t have been hurt the way you’ve been. They have no conscience, no soul, no kindness in them at all, and it doesn’t matter what magic you use, you’re exactly the opposite. I haven’t known you very long, Kurt, but I know that.” Kurt stayed stock still in Blaine’s grip, disbelief on his face, but at least he’d stopped edging towards the water. Blaine cautiously let go with one hand when tears welled up and spilled down Kurt’s face, putting it on his own cloak instead and lifting the edge to wipe them away with the soft lining.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispered. “I’m just tired. I’ll be better once I get some rest.” Blaine took a chance and slipped an arm around Kurt’s waist, holding him loosely and walking backwards, away from the river.

 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t mind. You’re allowed to be upset, Kurt, and you can always talk about it to me if you need to, or to the others. Those things Sorin forced you to do, the ways that the Goddess used you, you shouldn’t keep that bottled up inside. None of us judge you for them. All we can do here is survive, and keep fighting, and you have.”

 

Kurt snorted quietly. “I didn’t survive, Blaine. Or have you forgotten about the enormous pile of rocks you dug me out of?”

 

“But you’re still here. And you could’ve taken that last step into the river before I got here, you could even do it now, I might not be able to stop you, but you didn’t. And you won’t. You don’t know for sure that you’ll come back if you die, you might not, but you  _know_ that are still things worth living for. And if you don’t know, I promise you that there are.”

 

Kurt’s face crumpled, and the tears began to fall again. Blaine stepped in closer, giving Kurt time to pull away if he needed to, and when Kurt didn’t resist, pulled him close. Kurt leaned in slightly, and Blaine gently pulled his head down to rest on his shoulder the way that he’d seen Mercedes do a hundred times. Kurt let out a tiny sob with his next exhale, his chest jogging against Blaine’s. As the seconds passed, his sobs became rougher and louder, and Blaine slowly began to stroke his hand up and down Kurt’s back under his cloak.

 

Kurt subsided into sniffles eventually as he cried himself out, leaving his arms by his side and his face buried in Blaine’s cloak at the shoulder. The rise and fall of his chest slowed as he calmed, and when he spoke, it was in a nearly silent and tear-roughened whisper. “It was so peaceful there. Quiet, and dark, and  _warm_ , I feel like I haven’t been warm in years. There was no one that wanted to hurt me, no one at all, really, just the Goddess whispering in my ear now and then. I know that I was only dead for a few hours, but it felt longer, and I wasn’t ready to come back.”

 

Blaine stroked down Kurt’s back again, searching for the words that would keep Kurt talking, keep Kurt with him. “It sounds kind of like she wanted to take care of you for as long as she could,” he said eventually. “Have you talked to Mercedes about it yet? I think she could understand better than me.”

 

“It was different for her,” Kurt said, taking in a deep, shuddering breath. “She was with the Goddess, watching and waiting. She wanted to come back.” Kurt stiffened in his arms, like he’d realized how much of himself he’d bared. He took a small step back, silently asking for Blaine to let him go. Blaine released him, and Kurt averted his eyes, wiping at his cheeks. All traces of blue glow were gone, leaving only his pale face to catch the moonlight. “I’m going to go back to camp. I should’ve stayed in the first place, it’s not safe. Sorry.”

 

He took a step like he was going to brush past Blaine, but stopped when Blaine laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Kurt. You don’t have to pretend to be okay if you’re not.” Blaine risked looking up to meet Kurt’s eyes, but Kurt kept them averted. “And, if you need to leave camp like this again, I’ll come with you. We don’t need to talk, not if you don’t want to, but I need you to be safe.”

 

Kurt met his eyes, a shadow of a sad smile playing about his lips. “You’re sweet, thank you, but I don’t think I can be your Sasha, Blaine. There isn’t very much left to protect me from, and it’s been pointedly proved time and again that I can’t protect anyone.”

 

“I think you can do more than you think,” Blaine said. “As far as we know, your friends are alive and they escaped Sorin, and that’s because of you. When those bandits attacked you and Sam, you bought enough time that Mercedes and I could make it there to help. I’m not asking you to be Sasha. I’m asking you to let me be Sofie. Let me keep you safe.”

 

“I am safe,” Kurt said quietly. “I just said it. No one can do anything to me anymore. When I killed those bandits, I thought I would be sad. They were people, and none of them wanted to die. But I didn’t feel anything. It’s good, I think. There’s nothing left that can hurt me.” Kurt pulled his cloak around him and turned away from Blaine, his footsteps crunching in the snow as he walked back toward camp.

 

Blaine didn’t watch him go, caught up in his thoughts. The clouds were clearing, and stars were becoming visible above, reflected and distorted by the rushing surface of the river. A sudden chill made him shiver, and he turned away from the river, rushing to catch up to Kurt.

 

~*~

 

Screams. Blood and fire and death and so much screaming and the light of the burning town flickers off the dragon’s scales as she cranes her neck down to bite a fleeing man in half and he is  _laughing_.

 

Kurt woke up silently, his eyes snapping open. He was in the wagon, his face against Mercedes’ back, and he pressed himself closer against her reassuring solidity.

 

He shouldn’t have told Blaine. The entire conversation was a blur, the most he’d spoken in a while, and he been doing so well at keeping it inside. They were getting closer and closer to the Plaguelands, and no one needed more of his damage to deal with. He listened to Mercedes breathe, picking it out of Sam’s quiet snoring and Blaine’s deep breaths. Matt must be on watch now. It had been his turn for third watch, which meant that it must be getting close to morning.

 

Kurt rolled over on his back, giving up on sleep. Matt seemed to like talking to him now, maybe he would help him pass the time. The Matt he remembered had been vaguely uncomfortable around him, and quiet all the time. It was almost funny that their positions were switched now, but not quite.

 

Kurt pulled his cloak back on and slid out of the back of the wagon, flexing his knees to absorb the sound and impact of hitting the ground. He listened for a moment for any hint that he’d disturbed the people still asleep, and then walked around the wagon to the fire. Matt wasn’t there, but that wasn’t completely unexpected. He was probably making a circuit of the camp perimeter.

 

Kurt crouched by the fire, holding his hands out to it to warm them and waiting for Matt to come back, but he didn’t. After fifteen minutes or so of waiting, Kurt started to wonder. He stood up and looked out into the night, searching for any trace of movement. “Matt?” he whispered. “Matt, where are you?”

 

He paused, waiting for an answer, but nothing came. He headed towards the river for the second time that night, pausing every couple of steps to listen for sounds of life. “Matt?” he called a little louder. “Are you there? Are you okay?”

 

He heard a quiet hissing sound off to his left, and spun to face it, studying the dark trees and beginning to feel the first traces of concern. Matt would’ve answered by now. If there was something in the trees with him, it wasn’t Matt, and the smart thing for him to do would be to turn and run back to the wagon as quickly as he could and get help.

 

Kurt shuffled sideways, preparing to run, and tripped over something at ankle height that hadn’t been there the moment before, landing hard in the snow. He put out a hand to touch it, and was surprised to find a thin rope, dry and fluffy to the touch. He scrambled to his feet and lit up his hand with magic, illuminating the area.

 

There was a quiet chittering sound from all around him, and the light from the magic glistened off dozens of multi-faceted eyes and revealed the dark bodies of at least a dozen enormous spiders. They came easily up to his chest, balancing on eight legs that were thicker than his forearms, and each had a web stretched between its front legs like a net.

 

Kurt wondered if it was some sort of divine judgement, if he was being punished for considering disobedience by being sentenced to a painful death by a disgustingly large spider, or if he honestly just had luck that was so appallingly bad that the threat of being eaten by a spider wasn’t supposed to be ridiculous. He wasn’t supposed to die here, and he didn’t particularly want to experience being reconstituted from whatever they left behind of him, but he was surrounded.

 

He pushed up the intensity of the magic flowing out through his hand, and the spiders flinched back. They hadn’t approached him while he was beside the fire either, maybe they didn’t like light or fire or some combination of them. He took a step back towards the camp, and the spiders blocking his way slowly gave way and backed up. He took another step towards them, breathing slowly and deliberately, and then he was hit from behind and one of the spiders was wrapping its net around him and digging sharp fangs deep into his shoulder.

 

The spider reared back almost immediately, rubbing its fangs along the ground like the taste of Kurt was toxic, but the damage was done. Kurt’s mind blurred almost immediately, and he struggled with the net that pinned his arms to his chest, but couldn’t stretch it. The fibers of the silk tangled with each other, wrapping him tighter as he thrashed.

 

He started to feel heavy and sleepy as venom spread through his body, and by the time a different spider was wrapping up his legs, it almost impossible to keep his eyes open despite  _knowing_  that if he fell asleep, he was dead. He thought to reach for magic again too late, and it skittered away from him, not letting him get a grip on it on drag it to the surface.

 

Kurt blinked, and was abruptly dropped to the ground with a faraway thud. He watched dazedly as the spiders began to disappear back into the trees. They were...leaving? Why were they leaving?

 

He tried to blink again to focus his vision, but it was too much work to open his eyes after. Kurt relaxed, letting the web hold him tight. The feeling of being swaddled was almost reassuring, and he felt warm all over. A wave of drowsiness came in, and Kurt didn’t fight being carried away on it.

 

~*~

 

Mercedes woke up to a cold back. Kurt was gone again. She sat up, holding the blankets down so she wouldn’t let in the cold air and wake up Blaine or Sam before she needed to. Blaine snuffled quietly and burrowed down deeper into his bedroll as Mercedes carefully stood up, sliding her feet into her boots and grabbing her cloak. Kurt’s was gone too, so at least he’d had the foresight to wrap himself up this time.

 

She swung off the back of the wagon and looked around. The first vestiges of dawn were just starting to light up the campsite, and the fire had burned down to coals despite a supply of wood piled beside it. Matt was supposed to be on watch. Why hadn’t he been tending the fire? For that matter, where was he?

 

Kurt wasn’t there either, and Mercedes lifted the flap of the wagon cover again to hiss, “Sam! Blaine! Wake up!”

 

“Mmm?” Sam mumbled. “What?”

 

“Matt and Kurt are both gone,” Mercedes said. “I don’t see them.”

 

Blaine jerked upright at that. “What?” he demanded, suddenly awake. “Gone where?”

 

“I don’t know!” Mercedes said. “Can you two get up and help me look for them? I have a really bad feeling about this.”

 

Blaine was up and out of the wagon in seconds, looking scared. “Kurt wandered off while I was on watch earlier, and he went to the river. He might have gone back. I told him he should take me with him if he went again, but maybe he asked Matt instead?”

 

“He wouldn’t have,” Mercedes said. “He would’ve gone by himself if he did at all.” She scanned the ground, looking for fresh tracks or signs of a struggle. “Matt!” she called loudly, reasoning that there was no one left asleep to disturb. “Kurt?”

 

They paused to listen, but there was nothing. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll try the river first. If they actually did just go for a walk or something, that’s probably where they’ll be. We should stick together though, just in case something did happen.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” Sam said. “I’m going to grab our weapons, give me a second.” He turned back to the wagon, and Mercedes took the opportunity to light up her holy symbol, the white glow cutting through the early morning gloom.

 

The breeze shifted, and one of the horses whinnied suddenly, loud and fearful, like the change in wind direction carried with it an uneasy smell. It didn’t take long for the other horses to pick up on it, stamping their feet and braying loudly. Blaine looked at Mercedes, concerned expression slowly warping into fear, and whispered, “There’s something moving in the trees.”

 

~*~

 

Kurt woke up feeling chilly, which wasn’t new, and slightly hungover, which was very new. He blinked his eyes open to see trees, lit up by the weak winter sunlight. “What?” he mumbled. He tried to roll over, but he couldn’t move, and everything came rushing back to him- Matt disappearing, Kurt going after him thoughtlessly, and then the spiders.

 

They’d bitten him, wrapped him up, but then they’d left him there for some reason. He thought back to the way the spider had reacted when it had bit him, and wondered if he was so unappealing that even man-eating monsters turned their noses up at him. He remembered the dead area around the fort where they hadn’t seen anything alive for almost a week past it, and he had his answer. They didn’t want to eat something that tasted of the Spellplague.

 

“Fine,” Kurt muttered. “I didn’t want to be eaten, anyway.” He slowly wriggled until his hands could touch each other, and then began to cast a small fire spell. The web wasn’t sticky, it mostly just tangled with itself, so if he could burn a hole through it he could probably get free.

 

Kurt released a small wall of fire outwards, wriggling his hand until there was a sizable hole burned into the cocoon. He pushed his arms out and peeled the web back, pulling it apart and over his head so he could sit up.

 

Freeing his legs was considerably more time consuming, and he had to carefully burn through several more sections of web, wishing that he’d brought his dagger so he could just cut through it. He wasn’t that far from camp, and Mercedes or Blaine or Sam or Matt, wherever he’d gone, should’ve found him by now, but they hadn’t. Either they’d left him, or something had happened to them, and Kurt didn’t think that they would leave him.

 

He was getting frustrated by the time that he pulled the last of the web off his pants and stood up. He stumbled a little on his first step, still a little shaky from whatever toxin the spider had pumped into him, but didn’t fall. The next step came easier, and then he was running back to where they’d set up camp.

 

He emerged into the clearing beside the road to see the wagon still there, and he had almost breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that there was no one there. He stepped towards the wagon cautiously, looking around and hoping that they were just playing an elaborate practical joke.

 

“Mercedes?” he called. His voice sounded thin and reedy in the wintry air, and all he got in response was a snort from the other side of the wagon. He circled around to see the horses, still lathered like they’d been in a panic recently, calm but regarding him distrustfully, and no one else. Prints littered the ground in regular patterns, and he knew that the spiders had been there.

 

Mercedes was gone, and he was alone. He’d told Blaine only hours before that there was nothing that could hurt him, and he realized with sudden clarity that just because he wanted it to be true didn’t mean it was. The thought of Mercedes and Blaine and Sam being attacked by those creatures  _hurt_ , and the knowledge that they and Matt might already be dead because he’d been so _stupid_  and not woken one of them up to say where he was going before going looking for Matt made him incredibly angry and heartsick.

 

He needed them, all the time he needed them, and they’d all been there for him. They’d needed him  _once_ , and he’d failed. Kurt kicked the side of the wagon and let out a frustrated yell, then bit his lip sharply. There was still a chance. He could still save them, maybe, and then he could prove Sorin wrong. Except...

 

Except Sorin had told him again and again that once everyone knew about what he’d done in Lilsholm that they would want him dead, and Mercedes hadn’t. Mercedes had hugged him and told him that it wasn’t his fault, that she didn’t blame him. And Sorin had told him that he couldn’t protect anyone, but those bandits hadn’t managed to kill Sam or take them prisoner, and Blaine had said that Kurt was the reason that everyone but him and Mercedes had made it back to the portal and away from Sorin. He had protected them once, and he could again.

 

“You’re a liar,” he said aloud, testing the words. “Everything you said about me was a lie, Sorin, and I don’t believe you. Dad wasn’t disappointed in me. He  _loved_  me, and I’m going to see him again because you’re a liar and he will still love me when this is all over.”

 

Kurt’s hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists. “And it isn’t my fault. Nothing you did to me is my fault. I am not a monster,” he whispered firmly. “I’m not.” He let his breath out with a sigh.  _Maybe if I say that enough times, it’ll start sounding a little more believable._  “And I’m not letting what you did control me like this.”

 

He pulled himself up into the wagon and grabbed his dagger, belting it on and jumping back out. He walked the perimeter of the camp until he found drag marks in the snow that looked like they could have been left by people being pulled, surrounded by the distinctive prints of the spiders. He studied them for a while and unclasped his cloak, letting it drop to the snow around him. It would only slow him down. Kurt breathed in slowly and took off at a light run, following the tracks.

 

Kurt had been running for five minutes and was beginning to wonder if he was going the right way when he saw a spider lurking out of the corner of his eye. He stopped dead and reached deep inside himself, ripping out the magic he needed and hurling a fireball into the spider’s face just as it was about to charge at him.

 

The creature screeched as it burned, and Kurt heard other spiders responding. The river was nearby, and he could put his back to it and let them come to him. He turned and ran, casting as he did, preparing another fireball, this one larger. He slipped slightly as he reached the river and stopped, then turned around to face the spiders following him.

 

They emerged from the trees in a large group, and Kurt hurled his spell into the middle of them. The magic compressed and then exploded into blue flames, engulfing most of the group in flames. Only a few spiders were dead when the flames cleared, since Kurt had to sacrifice heat for area with his larger spells, but although the living ones were enraged, chittering wildly, they were also burned and moving slowly, giving him the time he needed.

 

Kurt began the spell again, watching as the spiders approached and pulling the magic together as quickly as he could. By the time he finished forming the ball of magic, the nearest spider was almost upon him, but Kurt launched the ball of magic towards them again and leapt to the side to get out of the range of the explosion.

 

The second time cleared up most of the spiders, a few stragglers still walking about unsteadily, but the large majority dead and burned. Kurt moved away from the water’s edge and dropped to one knee, breathing heavily from the exertion of using so much magic in such a short time. He gave himself a minute to catch his breath, watching as the last few spiders dropped to the ground, and then retraced his steps to the trail he’d been following. He had to be close.

 

The clearing took him by surprise when he found it, but it was a good surprise, for once. It was completely empty of spiders, but decorated in web. Trees were covered in the stuff, and the ground had a coating of it mixed in with the snow. Mercedes, Blaine and Sam were upright against separate trees, wrapped tightly in web and limp. Blaine was the closest, and lifted his head woozily as Kurt approached.

 

“Hi,” Kurt said. “You’re fine, let me cut you loose.”

 

“Kuuuuur?” Blaine drawled, frowning and pressing his lips together like they’d betrayed him when his voice came out weak and confused sounding.

 

“Yeah, it’s me. I took care of the spiders, it’s going to be fine, don’t worry.” Kurt drew his dagger and started to cut at the web covering Blaine.

 

“Stop.”

 

The order came from behind him, and Kurt jerked around-he hadn’t heard anyone approaching, how had he missed it- just in time for Matt to punch him in the face. Colours exploded in his vision and he staggered back, putting his off hand over his throbbing cheek.

 

“-are you doing?!” Blaine was shouting when his hearing came back. Kurt blinked at Matt dazedly, taking a few more steps backward for good measure.

 

“This is probably a bad time for me to tell you that I’m working for Sorin and have been this whole time, isn’t it,” Matt said flatly, his eyes glittering with anger and fixed on Kurt. “But then, it’s probably the best time for me, since three of you are wrapped up like the gifts you’ll be and the one that needs to die is pretty useless.”

 

The significance of everything after Matt said “Sorin” disappeared in a wave of white noise, Kurt’s brain unable to process it. By the time he caught up, Matt was already walking towards him again and Blaine was shouting. Kurt ran backwards, trying to keep the distance between them.

 

“She came to me just after I joined the caravan and left Lilsholm,” Matt said, casually but with an underlying rage that made the hairs on Kurt’s arms stand up. “I didn’t want to hear the truth at first. It took her a long time to get through to me, but she did, and then she accepted me as a partner in her quest to keep the corrupted Goddess from succeeding in her plot to take over the world.”

 

“Now, Kurt,” he continued, “It took months of planning, but eventually Sorin and Ylidihe were able to launch the operation to rescue you all from your father’s brainwashing. She succeeded, but at a terrible cost. I always thought you were just a weird kid. I had no idea you were capable of murder, especially not at that scale.”

 

Kurt kept his mouth shut, something dangerous lurking behind Matt’s eyes and telling him to not speak. He knew what “getting through” to Matt had been. Sorin had tried to do the same to him.

 

“You killed all those people, Kurt, burned them to death at the behest of your Goddess. I know that you’re the only one here who was there to know exactly what happened, but Sorin showed me enough. The others...” he gestured at Blaine, twisting furiously in the webs, and to Mercedes and Sam, completely unaware, “Well, maybe with time they can be shown the right path, but you...You need to die.”

 

Matt took a threatening step toward him, and Kurt nearly tripped jumping backwards. “Matt,” he said. “Matt, please, I know what Sorin did to you, she is a  _liar_  and she did the same to me, please, stop, wait, we can talk about this.”

 

“We can talk about this? Did you want to talk about it when you were murdering my family? Or is Sorin lying about that, too?”

 

“It wasn’t like that!” Kurt was crying, he could feel the tears welling up, and Matt got even angrier when he saw them.

 

“It was exactly like that. I know what you are and what you’ll do to me if you get the chance. Do you think I’ll scream more like my father or my brother when you burn me to death, Kurt? Will you laugh?” Matt spread his arms and stepped forward. Kurt backpedaled again to keep the distance between them, his cheek throbbing.

 

“I didn’t...”  _want to_ , his brain finishes, but his voice fails him in the face of Matt’s anger.

 

“Yes, you  _did_ , Sorin showed me everything, you liar. You laughed while they were screaming, and the Goddess told you to kill and you did. You are irredeemable.” Kurt stepped back again and brandished his dagger when Matt jerked forward. “Can you use that?” he asked. “I don’t think you can. You don’t want to show them what you are, do you?” He gestured to Mercedes and Sam, still limp with half-lidded eyes from the spider venom, and then to Blaine, who was trying to get his feet underneath him to push off the tree but couldn’t get out of the web that trapped him.

 

“They know what I am, Matt,” Kurt snapped, fear and anger mixing together to make him abandon any kind of discretion. “They know exactly what I am, and they know that Sorin was the one responsible for Lilsholm, not me.”

 

The stars exploding in his vision were the first clue he had that he’d been hit again. He stumbled helplessly, trying to find his balance, until he hit a tree, leaning against it until his vision cleared.

 

“Kurt, Kurt, are you okay?” a voice said in his ear. He turned his head to see Blaine struggling against the web that bound him to the same tree, his face inches from his own. Kurt nodded, watching the way Blaine’s eyes came in and out of focus. They were really pretty eyes, he noticed.

 

“Kurt, I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry you have to do this, but you have to stop him,” Blaine whispered. “We’re all dead if you don’t.”

 

“I can’t do that,” Kurt mumbled. Nothing was clear, the world was fuzzy around the edges, but he knew he couldn’t be what Matt thought he was, couldn’t hurt someone who’d been so hurt already. He knew that like he knew that Matt was going to kill him.

 

“Please,” Blaine said, wiggling his arm and poking his fingers through the web to touch Kurt’s hand. Kurt felt a rush of warmth and his head cleared a little just in time to duck to the side as Matt swung again.

 

“Matt, what the hell are you doing?” Mercedes demanded in a slurred voice as she roused enough to comprehend what was going on. “Stop!”

 

“Hang tight, Mercedes, I’ll come back to you when I’m done here,” Matt said calmly, his anger gone and replaced by a terrifyingly placid tone.

 

Kurt seized the opportunity to shift his grip on his dagger and dance around to the other side of Blaine, slicing a long cut down the the web that pinned him as surreptitiously as he could and then put the tree between Matt and him. The cut was big enough that Blaine would be able to free himself, but not if Matt was right there to pull the webbing back together. He had to lure him away.

 

Matt looked surprised by Kurt’s sudden about face and dash into the trees. “I’m not letting you kill me like this,” he said, allowing all his fear to come through in his voice. “I’m not.”

 

“It’s not a matter of letting me,” Matt said, skirting around the tree and heading towards Kurt. “If I don’t let you use your magic, you’re actually about as helpless as my brother was, and I’m going to make sure that you feel as much agony as he did before you die. I owe it to him.”

 

Kurt opened his mouth like he was going to respond, and saw Blaine’s arm stick out of the web out of the corner of his eye. Matt paused to hear his answer, and Kurt turned and ran, taking advantage of his surprise.

 

The trees whipped by him in a blur, and Kurt was both grateful for and cursed the coating of snow on the ground. It would make it easy to follow him, which meant that if Blaine got free he’d be able to find Kurt to help him, but it also meant that he didn’t stand a chance of losing Matt.

 

Matt, who had been quiet and kind. Matt, who had left town suddenly only that spring. Matt, who Sorin had tortured until he believed every word she said. That could’ve been Kurt, almost had been Kurt.

 

He could hear the pounding of feet behind him, and knew that Matt was following but didn’t dare to look back to see how close he was. He pushed himself harder, ignoring the burn in his lungs and the throbbing in his head.

 

The sounds of water grew louder as he ran, but the water was hidden from him by the thick forest until he was almost upon it, and then he was on the banks of the river again. The drop from the bank into the water wasn’t as steep as it had been where he’d been the night before, but it was still substantial, and Matt caught him as he tried to change direction to run along the bank, grabbing him around the chest with one arm and crushing his dagger hand against the hilt with the other.

 

“I didn’t think of this before, but since you’re so fond of fire, it seems sort of fitting in an ironic way if I just throw you in the river,” he said. “How’s your swimming?” Kurt dug his heels in as Matt dragged him forward and wrenched the dagger out of his hand, tossing it aside. He couldn’t die here, wouldn’t die here, not so long as his friends needed him. He couldn’t let Sorin have them, not with the evidence of what she would do to them pinning him to his chest.

 

“This isn’t you, Matt, it’s not,” Kurt tried desperately, pushing his feet against the ground. “Sorin hurt you, I know she did, but we can help you, you don’t need to obey her.”

 

“It’s almost cute how you think you know me.” Matt let go off his arm suddenly, and Kurt grabbed at Matt’s sleeve, trying to get a solid grip. His world exploded into colours again as Matt punched him in the temple, and his hands went slack, refusing to cooperate. “Bye Kurt.”

 

~*~

 

Blaine raced through the trees, following the footsteps. The river burbled nearby, and he could hear voices. The words were obscured by the water, but he knew they meant that Matt had caught up to Kurt.

 

The voices stopped suddenly, and Blaine broke out of the trees at the riverbank in time to see Matt toss Kurt’s limp body down the bank, hitting the water with a splash. Matt stood back up to watch, staring into the water, but twisted at the sound of Blaine’s thudding footsteps as he raced for the bank to jump in himself.

 

Matt intercepted him midway, tackling him to the ground and trying to pin him. “No you don’t,” he said, breathing heavily. “I need you for when Sorin arrives.”

 

Blaine punched him in the face instead of answering, and tried to throw his knee into Matt’s side. He missed, but the punch stunned Matt for long enough that he could get his other arm free to punch him in the side. He spotted Kurt’s dagger lying on the ground, and wormed his way out from under Matt, flipping over onto his hands and knees to lunge for it.

 

Matt dropped on him before he could reach it, his weight collapsing Blaine’s hands underneath of him. “Stop struggling,” he said warningly. “I can hurt you badly and not worry about taking care of you, because it isn’t like Mercedes will just let you die, so I suggest you stop.”

 

Blaine struggled anyway, not willing to stop and let Kurt die like that, but couldn’t get loose. He was just starting to give up when Matt let out a startled huff of air, and that was all the warning Blaine had before a heavy impact knocked Matt off of him.

 

Blaine rolled over breathlessly to see a soaking wet Kurt grappling with Matt. He was shocked into stillness by Kurt’s reappearance for a second, just long enough for Matt to flip them over, pinning Kurt and fumbling at his belt for a knife.

 

Blaine grabbed Kurt’s dagger and ran at them, slashing at Matt’s arm to get his hand away from the knife and kicking him in the face so he could shove him off of Kurt, whose face was bone white and clenched with pain. Blaine winced in sympathy at how cold the water must have been before grabbing Kurt’s collar and dragging him away from Matt, letting him drop to the ground beside a tree and standing between the two of them.

 

There was a crashing in the trees, and Sam and Mercedes appeared, flanking him. Matt laughed a little as he stood. “I guess I underestimated you a little. I didn’t think you two would be getting involved.”

 

“I am a  _cleric_ ,” Mercedes said, voice stern. “Good luck holding me with something as flimsy as that. Why are you doing this, Matt? It doesn’t make any sense.”

 

“He’s with Sorin,” Kurt said, voice choked with cold. “She did something to him.”

 

Mercedes looked quickly down at Kurt and then back at Matt, and her voice was infinitely gentler the next time she spoke. “Matt, let’s talk about this. Sorin is-”

 

“I know what Sorin is!” Matt snapped. “Don’t talk down to me! You’re the ones who are following a dead Goddess wherever she leads. At least Sorin is alive!”

 

“Matt, she lied to you, it’s what she does,” Kurt said, his voice getting more and more desperate. “Don’t believe her, please don’t believe her.”

 

“The Goddess lied to you, and you killed an entire town, Kurt! Or do you really think that she’ll keep her promise and bring them all back? All of you are going to go into the Plaguelands, and none of you are going to come back. That little seed of magic she put in us? She’ll take it back, and we won’t survive. And you’re honestly the stupidest of all of us, Kurt. Or did you think that every abomination wouldn’t die with the Plaguelands? What do you think happens to you?” Matt smiled meanly at them. “You’re all going to die, and I’m not going to wait for it. Good luck, I’m sure you’ll have many regrets when I see you in the afterlife.”

 

Blaine dropped the dagger and broke into a run as exactly what Matt was saying hit him, but Matt was already too close to the riverbank. He turned and ran, leaping into the river and hitting the icy water with a splash, disappearing below the surface.

 

Sam skidded to halt beside him at the edge of the bank, scanning the surface, but Matt didn’t resurface. “He knows he can’t beat us all, so he’s killing himself?” he said, high and strained. “Why would he do that?”

 

Blaine stared at the surface of the river, hoping for any sign of life, any indication of where Matt was. “I don’t know,” he said, unable to process Matt’s last words past  _you’re going to die_. “I just...I don’t know.”

 

~*~

 

Kurt woke up warm.

 

He took a deep breath and let it out, shifting slightly, and realized that he had also woken up nearly naked, lying on his side with someone pressed close on either side of him. He could see Mercedes’ familiar hair in front of him, and if he leaned forward slightly, it would tickle his nose.

 

He’d felt cold for so long that the river had just made him as pinched and hurt outside as he was inside. But when he’d sat there in the snow as Matt ranted, trying to convince his legs to work again, let him stand up, the pain had still been surprising, but in a good way. He could still be hurt. It was proof that he was human.

 

They’d only lingered for a couple of minutes. If they’d had Rachel and her incredible skill with cantrips, they could’ve waited all day, warm and safe, but as it was, none of them had to ability to dry off wet clothes. Kurt had been nearly frozen by the time they made it back to the wagon as it was. He had vague memories of Mercedes pulling his clothes off and Sam and Blaine quickly packing everything together and loading it in the wagon, and then he’d been cuddled close. He remembered Sam driving the wagon, which meant that it must be Blaine pressed up against him from behind.

 

Mercedes had cried, he remembered. He had patted her arm clumsily and whispered at her as he fell asleep, too cold to cry. He was warm now, though, and Matt was dead.

 

All summer while they’d been playing around, practicing to be “adventurers”, Sorin had been torturing Matt until she could tell him anything and be believed, with just enough of the truth mixed in to hurt.

 

Kurt did remember how Matt’s brother had sounded when he died.

 

He shivered, and felt Blaine move behind him in response. “Still cold?” he mumbled sleepily. “Here.” He rubbed a gentle hand up and down Kurt’s bare arm and pressed closer. Kurt relaxed, letting the warmth in, and closed his eyes again.

 

Matt had said that they were all going to die when they destroyed the Heart, but Kurt didn’t think the Goddess would do that. Sorin was a liar, and everything Matt had said was straight from her. They wouldn’t die. He had to believe that they wouldn’t die, because how could they choose between their friends and all the people that would die and had died because of the Spellplague? That wasn’t a choice at all.

 

What Matt had said about the abominations, though, that made him wonder. Would all of them die? Or maybe they’d come back to themselves and be people again. Kurt thought a lot about what it would be like to be normal. Maybe he’d get the chance to actually try it. Or maybe he would die. Kurt burrowed in deeper under the covers and thought about dying. He had been so certain that he wanted to go back to where he’d been when he was dead. But now...

 

He had been cold, and it had hurt so badly, and it still hurt, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. Lying in between Blaine and Mercedes was proof that there were places that could be warm when he was alive too, and he knew that they didn’t want him to die. It would hurt at least three people if he died again, and he could do some good if he was still alive.

 

For now, at least, that would be enough. It was time for him to live, and he was going to use it.

 

~*~

 

Mercedes blinked her eyes open slowly, wiping the sleep from them. She slid out from under the thick layer of blankets and cloaks that Sam had piled over her, Blaine and Kurt to hold in their body heat, and laid a hand on Kurt’s forehead. He was warm, but the good kind of warm, and snuffled quietly in his sleep. She stroked his hair back, and he smiled faintly in his sleep, pressing against the contact. She indulged herself for a moment, running her fingers through his hair and watching him smile, then tucked the covers around him firmly and got dressed, stepping over Kurt and Blaine carefully to get to the front of the wagon.

 

She pulled the wagon cover aside, blinking in the sunshine. It was late afternoon now, judging from the position of the sun when she could see it through the trees. Sam smiled hugely at her when she sat down beside him.

 

“I thought you guys were going to sleep forever,” he said quietly, stealing a glance back into the quiet wagon bed. “Is Kurt better?”

 

“He’s fine now, I think,” Mercedes said. “I’ll know for sure when he wakes up. Are you okay? I haven’t felt many aftereffects from the spider bites, but you never know.”

 

“I’m fine,” Sam said. “No worries.” They sat there quietly for a minute, and then both tried to speak at once, breaking the silence that was just beginning to get awkward.

 

“Do you-”

 

“I think-”

 

Mercedes snorted out a quiet laugh when they both stopped. “You first,” she said. “What do you think?”

 

“I think...I think that everything’s going to be okay,” Sam said. “I won’t believe that this is a suicide mission, because I can’t believe that I spent my entire life serving a Goddess who will throw me away when she’s done, or could throw  _you_  away, because I can’t even imagine that.”

 

Mercedes smiled a little and leaned into Sam’s shoulder, letting the silence come back while he steered the wagon, but it wasn’t awkward the second time.

 

“But what were you going to say?” Sam asked after a minute.

 

Mercedes sighed and sat back up. “Matt. He was really going to hand us over to Sorin.” Sam nodded. “I just, how did she do that to him? Get him so mixed up and convinced that he had to follow her? Kurt and I grew up with him, and I don’t understand why he believed her over us.”

 

“She made him want to,” Kurt said from inside the wagon, voice hoarse and tired sounding. “Sorin can do so much to people’s heads, Mercedes, and she had so long to break him. That wasn’t Matt. The Matt we knew has been gone since Sorin got her claws in him. We can’t trust anything he said.”

 

“How did he even find us then, if the Goddess didn’t send him?” Sam asked. “Like, obviously she didn’t send him to us, and Sorin hasn’t arrived to take us prisoner, so she doesn’t know where we are.”

 

“I think...” Kurt said quietly. “I think we’re sort of drawn to each other, in the same way that the shreds of the Goddess’ magic that are floating around are drawn to us, and deep down we can sort of feel the Heart so we can find it. It’s the same way that my mom could find everyone else when she was pregnant with me, and everyone else’s moms knew to trust her.”

 

“So why would Sorin just let him loose like that? That would make him her best chance to find us, wouldn’t it?” Blaine said, joining the conversation.

 

“I don’t know, I’m just guessing,” Kurt said. “Maybe she’s busy and knew that there would be a group of us passing through this way eventually?”

 

“Busy with what, though?” Sam said. “Why wouldn’t we be her number one priority?”

 

“There are four of us,” Mercedes said. “Rachel and Quinn and everyone are ten people, and they’re the much bigger threat to her. Sorin knows about you two, but she thinks I’m dead, and probably Kurt too. She’ll be focusing on finding them.”

 

“They’ll be okay,” Blaine said in a reassuring tone. “You said that she found you before by tracing Kurt’s magic, but she can’t do that anymore, right?”

 

“No,” Kurt said, “the Goddess got her out of my head.”

 

“Then all they have to do is lay low, and they’ll be fine. We’re being optimistic, right?” Blaine insisted. “It’s not like we have many choices about what we do, or much control over what happens to your friends, but we can hope.”

 

“There’s always hope,” Sam said, smiling at Mercedes. She smiled back, and he let go of the reins to touch her hand.

 

“Hey, wow,” Blaine said, “On another note, I think I can actually hear Sam awkwardly putting on the moves. You know we’re literally two feet away, right? Just because you can’t see us doesn’t mean we’re not here.”

 

Kurt made a quiet shushing sound and whispered, “Just put your pants on and go out the back. Give them a minute.” There was a rustling sound, and then twin thuds landed at the back of the wagon.

 

“Okay,” Blaine said loudly, “Kurt says I need to apologize for ruining your romantic moment, and we’ll just be back here while you talk.”

 

Mercedes looked at Sam sidelong, and he stared back with wide eyes. “I swear I wasn’t putting on the moves,” he said frantically. “Blaine’s an idiot, please don’t be mad.”

 

 “Sam,” Mercedes said firmly, cutting him off. “I’m not mad. It’s fine. I was thinking, and I don’t want to have any regrets. If we don’t succeed, I want to know that I lived my life while I had it. And I want you to be in it. In  _that_  way.”

 

“But, what if it’s a distraction? What if us being  _us_  is the reason we don’t succeed?” Sam looked pained to even bring it up, but they both knew they had to at least talk about it.

 

“If Sorin and Ylidihe catch us now, we’re done for. Nothing can change that. And I know it’s a risk, Sam, but it’s one that I think we can take.”

 

Sam thought about it for a minute, looking away from her. After what seemed like an eternity, he nodded and pulled the horses to a halt. He let the reins drop and turned to her, leaning in and bringing a hand up to her face. He paused an inch away to whisper, “Are you sure?”

 

Mercedes answered by leaning in herself and pressing their lips together. They broke apart a moment later, and Mercedes smiled at Sam. “I’m sure,” she said simply.

 

Sam surged forward to kiss her again, and Mercedes responded enthusiastically. She spared a thought for Kurt and Blaine, standing behind the wagon and waiting for them, but then Sam moved his mouth in a way that chased all conscious thought from her brain.

 

Mercedes pulled back after what felt like only seconds, but had to have been minutes. “Blaine and Kurt are right behind the wagon, and you need to get some rest,” she said regretfully.

 

“I really, really don’t, if it means we can kiss some more,” Sam said. “But yeah, oops, forgot about them a little. You guys okay back there?” he called.

 

“Just fine,” Blaine called back. “You can just, um, keep doing what you want. We’re cool.”

 

Sam looked back at Mercedes, and she bit her lip. “Well, if Blaine says it’s okay,” she said, barely containing her smile. “I guess we don’t have to stop.”

 

She ignored the fist pump that he did behind her back to wriggle forward, throwing her legs over his, and he pulled her close with a smile. Mercedes melted a little inside at it, and ran her fingers over his tunic and across his chest, smiling back at him. “Solely on the basis of the kissing,” she said, voice surprisingly husky, “I think that you and I are going to work out fine.”

 

“Oh, good,” Sam said, his smile turning pleased. “Blaine stopped being willing to watch me practice on my arm and rate my technique awhile ago, and I was worried that I was getting rusty.” He paused and made a face. “Can we pretend that I never, ever said that?”

 

“We can pretend, but I don’t think I’m ever going to forget it,” Mercedes said, torn between teasing mercilessly and letting it go.

 

“As long as kissing is still on the table, we’re good,” Sam said shamefacedly. “It is, right?”

 

“It absolutely is,” Mercedes promised. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

 

“Oh, good, because I am about to rock your world.”

 

“Not if I rock yours first,” Mercedes said with a challenging grin.

 

~*~

 

Kurt stood behind the wagon with a tiny smile on his face, determinedly not thinking about anything other than Sam and Mercedes being happy together.

 

“You’re smiling,” Blaine observed, sounding slightly surprised. Kurt supposed that it had been a little while since he’d had much to smile about, but he didn’t have to say it like that.

 

“I like romance,” he admitted. “It makes me feel like there’s hope. Like, even after everything, Sorin, and Ylidihe, and the Goddess, people can still fall in love and forget about it for a little while.”

 

Blaine smiled at him, and Kurt interrupted him before he could talk. “Thank you for coming after me this morning. Both times.”

 

Blaine looked surprised again, and Kurt elaborated, “I’m not okay. I know I’m not. But I’m going to keep on trying, and what you said this morning, or last night, or whatever, that helped. And if you hadn’t followed me and Matt, I would’ve died, and I don’t think I’d be able to deal with having to come back again. I don’t want to abandon everyone, but I don’t know if I could keep going after that.”

 

“I believe that you could, Kurt,” Blaine said quietly. “And you don’t have to thank me for anything I do that helps you. You’re a good person, and my friend, and I really care about you.” Blaine elbowed him softly and smiled. “Plus, I was totally getting beaten up, and then you hauled yourself out of a frozen river to help me. That was really impressive.”

 

Kurt shrugged. “I changed my mind about the river. It was a lot colder than I expected. Not a pleasant way to die.”

 

He’d meant it at least partially as a joke, but Blaine’s jaw tensed and the smile dropped off his face at the reminder, and Kurt regretted it as soon as he said it. He’d been talking about himself, but Matt had chosen it-only... “It wasn’t Matt that did that,” he said. “None of that was him. It was Sorin.”

 

“How can you be sure of that, though?” Blaine asked. “Some of the stuff he said...it kind of made sense.” He took a deep breath and said quickly, “I’m not going to let you die.”

 

“What?” Kurt asked.

 

“What Matt said about the abominations, how they’ll die with the Plaguelands. If that’s true, and you’re dying, the Goddess said that she would reward me and Sam when she gets her power back and I’ll ask her to not let you die. So if you don’t want to die, I’ll make sure you don’t.” Blaine touched his hand, and Kurt turned his palm up, offering it to be held. Blaine grabbed on tight. “I don’t have many real friends, Kurt, but even if I did, I couldn’t stand to lose you.”

 

“I’ll do my best,” Kurt said. “I don’t want to lose you either. And thanks.” He leaned against the back of the wagon and looked up at the treetops. “It really is pretty here,” he observed casually. “Maybe we can come back in the summer.”

 

Blaine flashed a brilliant grin at him, not missing the implications at all. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”

 

~*~

 

In the end, they set up camp where they’d stopped, reasoning that it was already late in the day and the horses had been very stressed by the spider attack. Mercedes tracked Kurt down after they’d eaten, leaving Blaine and Sam to whisper at each other as she pulled him behind the wagon.

 

“How do you feel?” she asked. “Sick? Tired?”

 

“I feel better than I have,” Kurt said honestly. “Don’t worry about me. How are you? Are you okay?”

 

“I keep thinking about Matt,” she said. Kurt nodded. “It’s just...he was our friend.”

 

“Maybe he’ll be okay too, in the end,” Kurt said hopefully. “The Goddess can bring him back, and he can be okay again.”

 

Mercedes looked at him with an indecipherable expression. “Maybe,” she said. “But you know that she’s not all-powerful, Kurt. She did die.”

 

“Of course I do,” Kurt snapped. “But I did so many terrible things, and every time I think back to Sorin and the things she did in my head I want to curl up in a ball and die. I have to believe that it’ll be okay, I have to look forward because when I look back I don’t want to keep trying.”

 

Mercedes dragged him down into a hug. “I’m sorry. It will be okay, Kurt. Maybe not everything, but enough will be okay. And even if it is, you’re allowed to be sad now, about Matt and your dad and everything. There aren’t rules for this.”

 

“I know,” Kurt whispered. “I’m sorry, too, I shouldn’t have been so rude.” He patted her on the back. “When all of this isn’t so fresh, you have to tell me everything about you and Sam, you know. It’s my responsibility as your best friend to squeal over the details with you.”

 

Mercedes huffed out a surprised laugh. “I will. Let me know when you want to hear it, okay?”

 

“I will,” Kurt promised, pulling away. “Are we okay?” He was suddenly vulnerable, his heart bare and in his eyes.

 

“We are always okay,” Mercedes said. “No matter what. Best friends.” She was rewarded by a brilliant smile flashing across Kurt’s face and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “I promise.”

 

~*~

 

The town was the second that they’d reached, and according to the map they’d bought in the town that stood in the southern shadow of the elven forest, the last before the Plaguelands. They would leave the wagon and horses there, since they wouldn’t survive any kind of exposure to the Plaguelands, and it would just be cruel to take them in or abandon them at the border.

 

The atmosphere had grown tense between them as the weeks stretched out and there was no sign of Sorin. Kurt was grateful to hop down from the wagon bench and relinquish the reins to a stablehand at the inn.

 

“We’re going to have to get packs of some sort to carry supplies,” Blaine said. “We have no idea how long we’ll be in there, and if we can’t take the wagon, we’ll need a different way to carry them.”

 

“Okay,” Mercedes said. “I’ll take care of the horses and storage for the things we want to keep but can’t take with us, Kurt, you can take care of the shopping, because I know you want to. Blaine, Sam, you guys can split how you want.” She smiled when Sam grabbed her hand, and made a shooing motion at Kurt, who didn’t need to be told twice, turning and heading toward the sounds of the market.

 

Blaine fell into step beside him. “Do you even have money?” he asked. “I do, if you need it.”

 

“Oh, good,” Kurt said absently, running through everything they’d need in his head. “I don’t have any.”

 

“What were you going to do then?” Blaine asked. “Ask to try on a pack and run off with it?”

 

“Not sure,” Kurt said. “I guess I was mostly hoping that you had the money today, not Sam.”

 

Blaine smiled at him, and Kurt pouted.

 

Shopping was easy. Bartering came back to him quickly, and by the time Sam came to check up on their progress, Kurt was nearly done. Sam left to go find Mercedes, and Kurt got distracted by a table full of interesting tunics that he was still sorting through when Mercedes called his name loudly.

 

He spun around, nearly panicking, but calmed down when she seemed alright, turning back to a grey tunic shot through with silvery threading. It was a bit plain for his tastes usually, but it was nice to look at and-Mercedes hadn’t been alone.

 

Dad.

 

It didn’t make any sense. Dad was dead, Kurt had seen him die, Kurt had  _killed_  him. But it was Dad, walking towards him quickly. Kurt couldn’t look away, couldn’t understand it. Dad was supposed to come back, but after. The order was wrong.

 

Dad wrapped him up so tight that his feet lifted off the ground, and he even smelled like Dad, it didn’t make sense but he was real. Kurt grabbed the back of his thick tunic under his cloak, holding on tightly and he knew it was irrational but he couldn’t let go even slightly, worried that Dad would disappear again. He buried his face in Dad’s shoulder, and became suddenly aware of sound again, past the pounding of his own heart.

 

Kurt was crying, huge ugly sobs, and Dad was whispering in his ear but he was crying too, Kurt could tell.

 

“I’m sorry Dad,” he choked out, saying the words he’d wanted to say for months. “I’m sorry, I love you.”

 

 Dad stroked a hand gently up and down his back, squeezing him tight. “I know, kiddo, I know, I love you too. Deep breaths for me, okay? It’s going to be alright.”

 

Kurt pressed closer and shut his eyes.

 

~*~


End file.
